Rates

How to spell rates

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rates

What does rates mean?

1. nounFixed amounts charged or measured per unit, such as prices, speeds, or proportions.
2. verbAssigns a value, rank, or quality to something (third-person singular form).
3. nounA local tax on property, historically levied by councils in Britain.

Rates in a sentence

• noun

  The hotel offers lower rates during the off-season.

• verb

  The magazine rates each restaurant on a five-point scale.

• noun

  Shop owners protested the increase in business rates this year.

• noun

  Interest rates rose again this quarter.

• verb

  She rates the new film among the best of the year.

• noun

  The council collects rates from every commercial building in the district.

Where does rates come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin phrase pro rata parte, meaning 'according to a fixed part', in which rata was the feminine past participle of reri, 'to reckon or calculate'. Medieval Latin used rata on its own for a calculated or proportional amount, and the word passed into English through Old French around the late fourteenth century. Its earliest English sense was an estimate or a reckoning of value, which is why we still speak of the rate at which something is charged or measured. From that root it branched into the idea of a fixed charge per unit, then into speed (so many units per hour), and in British usage into the local property tax once levied at a set rate. The same Latin reri also gives us 'ratio' and 'ration', so the family is built throughout on the notion of careful calculation, and the simple spelling rarely traps adults.

How the word is built

• rate (from Latin rata, a fixed amount)
• -s (plural / third-person singular ending)