the.com/toll booth
A tax you pay for the privilege of briefly stopping on a highway.
means A staffed or automated station on a road or bridge where drivers pay a fee to continue on their way.
from 'Toll' goes back to Old English 'toll'/'toln', rooted in a Germanic word meaning a portion or tax owed, likely connected to the same ancient root that gives us 'tell' and 'tale' — a toll was originally something 'counted out.' 'Booth' comes from Old Norse 'buð,' meaning a temporary dwelling or stall, the word merchants' and herders' shelters carried into English. Put together, the compound is barely a modern phrase — just two old, humble words, tax and shed, pressed into service once roads filled with wheels that needed charging by the mile.
- origin
- medieval lords taxed river crossings and bridges
- irony
- causes the traffic jam it charges you to sit in
- tech shift
- transponders replaced coin baskets, booths now mostly cameras
- economics term
- classic example of a toll good, excludable but non-rivalrous