tax

• enPR: tăks, IPA^(key): /tæks/

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• Homophone: tacks
• Rhymes: -æks

From Middle English taxe, from Middle French taxe, from Medieval Latin taxa. Doublet of task. Displaced native Old English gafol, which was also the word for "tribute" and "rent."

tax (countable and uncountable, plural taxes)

1. Money paid to the government other than for transaction-specific goods and services.

   Synonyms: impost, tribute, contribution, duty, toll, rate, assessment, exaction, custom, demand, levy

   Antonym: subsidy

   • 2013 May 17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly‎, volume 188, number 23, page 19:

     In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […]  Essential public services are cut so that the rich may pay less tax. The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra-wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.

2. (figurative, uncountable) A burdensome demand.

   a heavy tax on time or health

   • 1843, Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons - Volume 39, page 234:

     In the expectation that such would be the case, I came but slightly attended, sending most of my people with the heavy baggage by sea to the Indus, and I took every precaution to render the tax of my support as light as possible, by furnishing a memorandum of the number of persons composing my suite, and limiting the amount of supplies each should receive.

   • 1962 August, G. Freeman Allen, “Traffic control on the Great Northern Line”, in Modern Railways, page 128:

     The extent of the traffic is a tax on the existing yard in the area at Frodingham, the busiest in the District.

3. A task exacted from one who is under control; a contribution or service, the rendering of which is imposed upon a subject.
4. (obsolete) charge; censure
   • 1616–1618, John Fletcher; Philip Massinger; Nathan Field, “The Queene of Corinth”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

     Flie far from hence
     All private taxes, immodest phrases,
     What e'r may but shew like vicious.

• → Tok Pisin: takis
  • → Rotokas: takisi
• → Hindi: टैक्स (ṭaiks)
• → Urdu: ٹیکس‎ (ṭaiks)

From Middle English taxen, from Anglo-Norman taxer (“to impose a tax”), from Latin taxāre, present active infinitive of taxō (“I handle”, “I censure”, “I appraise”, “I compute”).

tax (third-person singular simple present taxes, present participle taxing, simple past and past participle taxed)

1. (transitive) To impose and collect a tax from (a person or company).

   Some think to tax the wealthy is the fairest.

   • 2018, Kristin Lawless, Formerly known as food, →ISBN, page 251:

     Taxing the food and chemical industries, which make billions off our food consumption, could be another way to generate revenue for the program.

2. (transitive) To impose and collect a tax on (something).

   Some think to tax wealth is destructive of a private sector.

3. (transitive) To make excessive demands on.

   Do not tax my patience.

   • 1847 March 30, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC:

     The people of the southeasterly clusters—concerning whom, however, but little is known—have a bad name as cannibals; and for that reason their hospitality is seldom taxed by the mariner.

   • 1960 February, R. C. Riley, “The London-Birmingham services - Past, Present and Future”, in Trains Illustrated, page 103:

     The heavy freight traffic which shares the double line between Paddington and Wolverhampton with the passenger traffic has taxed the ingenuity of the timetable planners.

   • 2007, January 16, “IBM”, in IBM - Reinventing the invention system - United States‎:

     But patent applications are increasingly accompanied by volumes and volumes of data on DVD, which taxes the resources of the patent office.

4. (transitive) To accuse.
5. (transitive) To examine accounts in order to allow or disallow items.

• taxable
• taxation

• ATX, Axt, xat

• tuxtax

tax

1. an onomatopoeia expressing the sound of blows, whack, crack
   • c. 197 BCE, Plautus, Persa :

     Tax tax- tergo meo erit. Non curo.

     My back will get whack, whack. I don't care.

• “tax”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• tax in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette
• “tax”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers

tax

1. Alternative form of taxe

tax

1. Alternative form of taxen

Borrowed from Armenian թաղ (tʿał).

• IPA^(key): /tɑːx/

tax f (Arabic spelling تاخ‎)

1. district, neighborhood, quarter
2. district, region

• Ačaṙean, Hračʿeay (1973), “թաղ (1)”, in Hayerēn armatakan baṙaran [Armenian Etymological Dictionary] (in Armenian), volume II, 2nd edition, a reprint of the original 1926–1935 seven-volume edition, Yerevan: University Press, page 143b
• Chyet, Michael L. (2003), “tax”, in Kurdish–English Dictionary, with selected etymologies by Martin Schwartz, New Haven and London: Yale University Press
• Jaba, Auguste; Justi, Ferdinand (1879), “تاغ”, in Dictionnaire Kurde-Français [Kurdish–French Dictionary], Saint Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, page 92b

• Homophone: tacks

tax c

1. a dachshund (dog breed)

• pansartax

• tax in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• tax in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• tax in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)