Credit – The Binding Chaos Lexicon

Anima owed to the prey of unbalanced interactions in order to achieve egalitarian balance.

Expanded explanation

Credit is what is owed, and prey is the word that fixes its direction. An unbalanced interaction moves energy one way, leaving one party with a debt and the other with a credit, and the credit belongs to whoever the energy was taken from. Balance is achieved when it comes back. Marsh treats this as the ordinary accounting of relationships rather than as a financial figure of speech, and the financial version is the derived case. Credit bondage is the invisible sister of the more obvious debt bondage, and it works through anticipation, since an unfulfilled promise is more addictive and harder to forget than a completed transaction. People frequently pay a debt in order to secure a future credit, which the credit score renders literally. The second use of the word, recognition for work, is the same thing in her framework rather than a homonym. Credit for one's work or ideas is the right of every person and provides the dignity of societal recognition, approval and belonging. What follows is the operational point. Credit unclaimed does not disperse. It is very commonly picked up by somebody else as an undeserved source of power, which is why Marsh advises attaching your name to your idea wherever the risk allows, not for fame but to stop the credit becoming a stranger's authority.

In Heather Marsh’s words

Marsh treats recognition for work and anima owed as the same quantity, which is why unclaimed credit is a security problem.

“Credit unclaimed does not disperse”
Stigmergy

Examples

The direction of the debt: Credit sits with whoever the energy was taken from, so the question is always who was the prey rather than who feels owed.
Credit bondage: An unfulfilled promise binds more tightly than a completed transaction, which makes anticipated credit a control mechanism.
Unclaimed credit as power: Recognition left unattached is taken by someone else and converted into authority, which is the argument for naming yourself as the source.

How others use it

Credit in finance is a claim on future payment, and the moral vocabulary around it, obligation, trust, worthiness, is old enough that David Graeber built an entire history of debt on the observation that the two languages have never been separable. Sociology of science has its own literature on credit as recognition, from Robert Merton on priority disputes and the Matthew effect to the long argument about authorship and the Matilda effect describing women's contributions being attributed elsewhere. Marsh's move is to refuse the separation between the two senses. Financial credit and scholarly credit are the same quantity in her account, anima owed for an unbalanced transfer, which is why she can move between a credit score and a stolen idea without changing subject.