toll
[t(ʰ)əʊ̯ɫ] noun, verb, proper noun
Also a form of tole
Forms tolls tolling tolled tole toal Toles
- noun A fee paid for some liberty or privilege, particularly for the privilege of passing over a bridge or on a highway, or for that of vending goods in a fair, market, etc.
- noun Loss or damage incurred through a disaster. “The war has taken its toll on the people.”
- noun A fee paid by the owner of materials or other goods for processing such goods, as under a tolling agreement.
- noun (business, by extension) A fee for using any kind of material processing service. “We can handle on a toll basis your needs for spray drying, repackaging, crushing and grinding, and dry blending.”
- noun (US) A tollbooth. “We will be replacing some manned tolls with high-speed device readers.”
- noun (UK, law, obsolete) A liberty to buy and sell within the bounds of a manor.
- noun (obsolete, regional England) A portion of grain taken by a miller as a compensation for grinding.
- verb (transitive) To impose a fee for the use of. “Once more it is proposed to toll the East River bridges.”
- verb (ambitransitive) To levy a toll on (someone or something).
- verb (transitive) To take as a toll.
- verb To pay a toll or tallage.
- noun The act or sound of ringing a bell, especially slowly, as with a church or cemetery bell.
- verb (ergative) To ring (a bell) slowly and repeatedly. “Martin tolled the great bell every day.”
- verb (transitive) To summon by ringing a bell. “The ringer tolled the workers back from the fields for vespers.”
- verb (transitive) To announce by ringing a bell. “The bells tolled the King’s death.”
- verb (figuratively) To make a sound as if made by a bell.
- verb (transitive, obsolete) To draw; pull; tug; drag.
- verb (transitive) To tear in pieces.
- verb (transitive) To draw; entice; invite; allure. “Hou many virgins shal she tolle and drawe to þe Lord - "Life of Our Lady"”
- verb (transitive) To lure with bait; tole (especially, fish and animals).
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English toll, tol, tolle, from Old English toll m or n and toln f (“toll, duty, custom”), from Proto-West Germanic *toll, *tolnu, from Proto-Germanic *tullaz, *tullō (“that which is counted or told, reckoning”), from Proto-Indo-European *del- (“calculation, fraud”).
Cognate with Saterland Frisian Tol (“toll”), Dutch tol (“toll”), German Zoll (“toll, duty, customs”), Danish told (“toll, duty, tariff”), Swedish tull (“toll, customs”), Icelandic tollur (“toll, customs”). More at tell, tale.
Alternate etymology derives Old English toll from Medieval Latin tolōneum, tolōnium, alteration (due to the Germanic forms above) of Latin telōneum, from Ancient Greek τελώνιον (telṓnion, “toll-house”), from τέλος (télos, “tax”).
Probably the same as Etymology 3. Possibly related to or influenced by toil
From Middle English tolen, tollen, variation of tullen, tillen (“to draw, allure, entice”), from Old English *tyllan, *tillan (“to pull, draw, attract”) (found in compounds fortyllan (“to seduce, lead astray, draw away from the mark, deceive”) and betyllan, betillan (“to lure, decoy”)), related to Old Frisian tilla (“to lift, raise”), Dutch tillen (“to lift, raise, weigh, buy”), Low German tillen (“to lift, remove”), Swedish dialectal tille (“to take up, appropriate”).
From Latin tollō (“to lift up”).
Webster’s 1913
- verb To take away; to vacate; to annul.
- verb To draw; to entice; to allure. See Tole.
- verb To cause to sound, as a bell, with strokes slowly and uniformly repeated; as, to toll the funeral bell. "The sexton tolled the bell." Hood.
- verb To sound or ring, as a bell, with strokes uniformly repeated at intervals, as at funerals, or in calling assemblies, or to announce the death of a person.
Etymology [L. tollere. See Tolerate.]
Etymology [See Tole.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “toll”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details