This paper argues that, as seen in Forssman 1966, νήποινος, and its Ionic-Attic derivative νηποινεί, is a compound of ἄποινα, not a compound of ποινή as usually assumed. The original meaning of ἄποινα is ‘Wergeld’, ‘material compensation paid by the offender’, as opposed to ποινή which originally means ‘reprisals’. Νήποινος applies to an offense or a crime for which no ἄποινα are paid. Later on, ἄποινα lost the feature ‘paid by the offender’ and was specialised in Homer in the meaning ‘ransom’. As a consequence, ἄποινα-formulas which were no longer suitable in the context were replaced by equivalent ποινή-formulas in epic diction. Prose, however, preserves the original meaning of ποινή, ‘reprisals’, and later ‘punishment’. The lexicographical presentation of both words in the LfgrE should be reversed. The semantic evolution of ἄποινα separated it from νήποινος, which was then analysed as νή-ποινος, compound of ποινή, instead of ν-ήποινος. This reanalysis is one of the starting points of the development of new privative compounds like νη-κερδής. As a consequence, a new privative compound was created to match ἄποινα, namely,  νάποινος, which in Il. 1.99 may have replaced an older νήποινος and reveals a different meaning for the phrase  πριάτην  νάποινον. The original meaning ‘reprisals’ of ποινή shows that Greek agrees with Iranian kaēnā ‘punishment, revenge’. Ἄποινα, a neuter plural, is a substantivised adjective referring to goods ‘keeping the ποινή away’, that is, ‘removing reprisals’: it is a possessive compound *ἀπόποινος < *h2epo-kwoino-, of the type ἀπόμυιος ‘chasing flies away’ (epiclesis of Zeus),  ἀπόσιτος ‘keeping food away’ (Hippocrates), and it is neither based on ἀποτίνω (Frisk, Chantraine) nor the reflex of *sm̥-kwoino- (West, Beekes). It underwent haplology in post-Mycenaean times and can be attributed to post-Linear B East Greek. The word is an Achaeism in Elean.