Tariff

How to spell tariff

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tariff

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tariff mean?

1. nounA tax or duty imposed by a government on goods entering or leaving a country.
2. nounA published list of fixed prices or charges, especially for a utility or service.

Tariff in a sentence

• The government raised the tariff on imported steel to protect local producers.

• She switched to a cheaper electricity tariff to lower her monthly bill.

• A high tariff on foreign cars pushed up showroom prices nationwide.

• The hotel posts its room tariff at the front desk for every season.

Where does tariff come from?

Language of origin: Arabic

This word traces back to the Arabic ta'rif, which meant a notification, an announcement, or a list giving information, built on the verb 'arrafa meaning 'to make known' or 'to define'. Mediterranean merchants carried the term into Italian as tariffa, where it came to mean a fixed list of prices or customs charges agreed for trade, and from there it passed into French as tarif. English adopted it in the late 1500s, first for an official table of duties levied on goods crossing a border, and later for any schedule of fixed charges. The original Arabic sense of 'making something known' survives in the modern idea that a tariff publicly sets out exactly what each item will cost. The spelling trap comes straight from this borrowed shape: a single r and double f would be wrong, since the standard form keeps a single f after the doubled r.

How the word is built

• tariff (a single root borrowed whole from Arabic ta'rif: a notification or list of fees); note the doubled -rr- and single -ff