Taxed

How to spell taxed

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce taxed

What does taxed mean?

1. verbImposed a compulsory financial charge by a government or authority.
2. verbPlaced a heavy demand or strain on someone or something.

Taxed in a sentence

• The new government taxed imported cars at a higher rate.

• The long climb taxed even the fittest members of the group.

• Luxury goods were taxed heavily in the last budget.

• The constant interruptions taxed her patience all afternoon.

Where does taxed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word tax arrived in English in the early 1300s from the Old French taxer, meaning 'to assess, to impose a charge', which in turn came from the Latin taxare, meaning 'to handle, to appraise, to estimate'. That Latin verb was a frequentative form of tangere, 'to touch', so the underlying idea was of touching something repeatedly in order to evaluate it. Over time the financial sense of demanding a payment to the state became dominant, and a parallel figurative sense of placing a heavy burden or strain on someone or something also developed. The past-tense form 'taxed' simply adds the regular -ed ending, and because tax ends in a single consonant after a vowel the spelling stays clean with no doubling. The same tangere root that gives us taxare also lies behind 'tangible' and 'contact', a useful reminder of the original sense of touching.

How the word is built

• tax (charge, levy)
• -ed (past tense suffix)