• enPR:tăks,IPA^(key):/tæks/

• Audio(US):

  (file)

• Homophone:tacks
• Rhymes:-æks

FromMiddle Englishtaxe, fromMiddle Frenchtaxe, fromMedieval Latintaxa.Doublet oftask. Displaced nativeOld Englishgafol, which was also the word for "tribute" and "rent."

tax (countable anduncountable,pluraltaxes)

1. Money paid to thegovernment other than fortransaction-specificgoods andservices.

   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”, inThe Guardian Weekly‎^[1], volume188, number23, page19:

     In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […]  Essential public services are cut so that the rich may pay lesstax. 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) Aburdensomedemand.

   a heavytax on time or health

   • 1843,Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons - Volume 39, page234:

     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 thetax 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”, inModern Railways, page128:

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

3. Atask exacted from one who is under control; a contribution or service, the rendering of which is imposed upon asubject.
4. (obsolete)charge;censure
   • 1616–1618,John Fletcher,Philip Massinger,Nathan Field, “The Queene of Corinth”, inComedies and Tragedies […], London:[…]Humphrey Robinson, […], and forHumphrey Moseley […], published1647,→OCLC,(please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

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

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

FromMiddle Englishtaxen, fromAnglo-Normantaxer(“to impose a tax”), fromLatintaxāre(“to handle, to censure, to appraise, to compute”).

tax (third-person singular simple presenttaxes,present participletaxing,simple past and past participletaxed)

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

   Some think totax the wealthy is the fairest.

   • 2018, Kristin Lawless,Formerly known as food,→ISBN, page251:

     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 totax wealth is destructive of a private sector.

4. (transitive) To make excessive demands on.

   Do nottax 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 seldomtaxed by the mariner.

   • 1960 February, R. C. Riley, “The London-Birmingham services - Past, Present and Future”, inTrains Illustrated, page103:

     The heavy freight traffic which shares the double line betweenPaddington andWolverhampton with the passenger traffic hastaxed the ingenuity of the timetable planners.

   • 2007 January 16, “IBM - Reinventing the invention system - United States”, inIDEAS from IBM‎^[2]:

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

5. (transitive) Toaccuse.
6. (transitive) Toexamine accounts in order to allow or disallow items.

• taxable
• taxation

• ATX,Axt,xat

• tuxtax

tax

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

     Taxtax-tergomeoerit.Noncuro.

     Myback will getwhack,whack. Idon'tcare.

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

tax

1. Alternative form oftaxe

tax

1. Alternative form oftaxen

Borrowed fromArmenianթաղ(tʻaġ).

• IPA^(key):/tɑːx/

tax f (Arabic spellingتاخ)

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

• Ačaṙean, Hračʻeay (1973) “թաղ (1)”, inHayerēn armatakan baṙaran [Armenian Etymological Dictionary] (in Armenian), 2nd edition, a reprint of the original 1926–1935 seven-volume edition, volume II, Yerevan: University Press,page143b
• Chyet, Michael L. (2003) “tax”, inKurdish–English Dictionary‎^[3], with selected etymologies by Martin Schwartz, New Haven and London: Yale University Press,page598
• Jaba, Auguste,Justi, Ferdinand (1879) “تاغ”, inDictionnaire Kurde-Français [Kurdish–French Dictionary], Saint Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences,page92b

• Homophone:tacks

tax c

1. adachshund (dog breed)

• pansartax

• tax inSvensk ordbok (SO)
• tax inSvenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• tax inSvenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)