tax
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "tax", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "tax" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "tax" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
tax is aEnglishnoun. It means: 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 inco... Pronounced /tæks/. It ranks #758 in English word frequency. Often confused with to and TV.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tax |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tæks/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #758 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for tax is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tæks/. Corpus data places it at rank #758 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for tax in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "to", "TV", "te", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English taxe, from Middle French taxe, from Medieval Latin taxa, from Latin taxō (“to appraise, value, estimate; (medieval) to tax”). Doublet of task. Displaced native Old English gafol, which was also the word for “tribute” and “rent”. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is tax, spelled T-A-X, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Money 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).
- 2A charge (of money, food, labor, etc) collected by a person, organization, etc; something required (exacted) from someone who is (really or notionally) under the control of the taxer, such as a contribution or service.
- 3A burdensome demand;
Etymology
From Middle English taxe, from Middle French taxe, from Medieval Latin taxa, from Latin taxō (“to appraise, value, estimate; (medieval) to tax”). Doublet of task. Displaced native Old English gafol, which was also the word for “tribute” and “rent”.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #758 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: