Taxi

How to spell taxi

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce taxi

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does taxi mean?

1. nounA car with a driver that you pay to take you somewhere.
2. verbWhen an aircraft moves slowly along the ground under its own power before or after flight.

Taxi in a sentence

• noun

  We hailed a taxi outside the station to reach the hotel.

• verb

  The pilot let the plane taxi to the gate after landing.

• noun

  The fare for the taxi across town came to twenty pounds.

• verb

  The jet began to taxi toward the runway for departure.

Where does taxi come from?

Language of origin: French

Taxi is a clipped form of taxicab, which in turn shortened the phrase taximeter cab. The taximeter was the device that measured the fare, and its name combined the medieval Latin taxa, meaning a charge or tariff, with the Greek metron, meaning a measure. English borrowed the term through the French taximètre around the start of the twentieth century, just as motorised cabs with fare-measuring meters were appearing in cities. The older word cab is itself a shortening of cabriolet, a light horse-drawn carriage, so the modern word stitches together two abbreviations. The simple spelling rarely troubles writers; the only mild quirk is that its plural can be written taxis or taxies, with taxis now far more usual.

How the word is built

• taxi (shortened from taxicab, itself from taximeter cab: taxa 'charge'
• metron 'measure')