the.com/excise
The tax that hides inside the price so outrage buys quietly, one sip at a time.
means To cut something out entirely, or a tax levied on the production or sale of specific goods within a country.
from These are actually two different word-families that collided into one spelling. The verb 'excise' (to cut out) comes from Latin excidere/excisus, 'to cut out' — ex- 'out' plus caedere 'to cut,' the same root that gives us 'scissors' and 'incision.' The noun 'excise' (the tax) took a different road entirely: it comes from Dutch accijns, itself likely from medieval Latin accensare ('to tax'), and entered English through Dutch trade and financial influence. So the tax-excise and the cut-out-excise aren't cousins — they just happen to wear the same name, which makes the tax feel like a 'cutting into' your purse by sheer poetic coincidence rather than true origin.
- origin
- from Latin for cutting, like the fee
- target
- usually alcohol, tobacco, fuel, sin goods
- baked in
- charged to makers, hidden in retail price
- as a verb
- means to cut out entirely, unrelated tax pun