Etymograph

English

tax

Tax comes from Middle English taxe ‘a tax or charge’, and goes back to Medieval Latin taxa.

  1. Medieval Latinc. 600–1500taxa1
  2. Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600taxe1
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500taxe1‘a tax or charge’
  4. Englishearliest quotation 1616–1618tax1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English tax
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1616–1618, John Fletcher, The Queene of Corinth: “Flie far from hence All private taxes, immodest phrases,…”.

Lineage

  1. Medieval Latinc. 600–1500taxaWiktionary, English tax
  2. Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600taxeWiktionary, English tax
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500taxeWiktionary, English tax‘a tax or charge’
  4. Englishearliest quotation 1616–1618taxWiktionary, English tax. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1616–1618, John Fletcher, The Queene of Corinth: “Flie far from hence All private taxes, immodest phrases,…”

Word family

English words that share an ancestor with tax, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.

through Medieval Latin taxa

  • taxi ← taximeter ← taximètre ← Taxameter

1 more relative in the full family tree

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Another origin of tax

  1. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEtaxōas taxāre‘to handle, to censure, to appraise, to compute’
  2. Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400taxer‘to impose a tax’
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500taxen‘to impose or collect a tax’
  4. Englishtodaytax

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Today it means

noun Money or goods collected by a government (or an entity to whom the government has delegated this power, e.g. in tax farming) to fund itself and its services, for example by levying a charge on income, purchases (sales), property or harvest, other than that money which is collected by the government in exchange for specific goods (e.g. the purchase of surplus vehicles).

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “tax”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Medieval Latin taxa / tax