Levy

How to spell levy

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce levy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does levy mean?

1. verbTo impose or collect a tax, fee, or charge by official authority.
2. nounA tax, fee, or charge imposed by an authority.

Levy in a sentence

• verb

  The council plans to levy a new charge on empty properties.

• noun

  Employers must pay a training levy for each apprentice.

• verb

  The government may levy an extra duty on imported goods.

• noun

  The airport added a small environmental levy to every ticket.

Where does levy come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Latin verb levare, meaning 'to raise' or 'to lift', which itself grew from the adjective levis, meaning 'light' (that is, not heavy). The sense link is that lifting something makes it feel lighter, and the same root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'elevate', 'lever', and 'relieve'. From Latin the word passed into Old French as the verb lever 'to raise' and its past participle levée 'a raising', and English borrowed it in the late 1300s and 1400s. The financial meaning came from the idea of 'raising' money or troops for the crown, so a levy was literally an amount raised by authority. The trap in the spelling is that the simple '-y' ending sounds identical to its homophone 'levee' (a river embankment or a formal reception), so remembering that the tax sense keeps the short, plain '-y' helps keep the two apart.

How the word is built

• lev- (raise, from Latin levare)
• -y (forming the noun and verb)