Tax

How to spell tax

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tax

What does tax mean?

1. nounA compulsory financial charge imposed by a government on income, goods, or activities.
2. verbTo impose a financial charge on a person, income, or product.
3. verbTo make heavy demands on someone's strength, resources, or patience.

Tax in a sentence

• noun

  The new tax on fuel raised prices at the pump.

• verb

  The government plans to tax imported cars more heavily next year.

• verb

  The long night shifts began to tax her health.

• noun

  She set aside part of her salary to cover the tax owed in April.

• verb

  Some councils want to tax second homes at a higher rate.

• verb

  Endless meetings can tax even the most patient manager.

Where does tax come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin verb taxare, meaning 'to assess', 'to appraise', or 'to charge', which itself was a frequentative form of tangere, meaning 'to touch'. The underlying idea was a kind of figurative touching: handling and evaluating something to set its worth. English took the word up through Old French taxer in the early 1300s, when it referred to assessing a payment owed to a ruler or the crown. From that financial sense grew the everyday noun for a compulsory charge levied by government, and a parallel sense of 'placing a heavy demand on something', as when a long journey taxes your patience. The same Latin root that gives us tax also lies behind 'taste' and 'tangent', a reminder that all three trace back to the simple act of touching.

How the word is built

• tax (from Latin taxare: to assess, appraise, charge)