toll
Definitions
General English
- noun the number of people hurt, of buildings damaged, etc.
- verb to ring a bell slowly, as for a funeral
Accounting
Cars & Driving
- noun money charged for the use of a road or bridge
Law
- verb to suspend a law for a period
Origin & History of “toll”
Toll ‘charge, payment’ (OE) and toll ‘ring a bell’ (15th c.) are distinct words. The former was borrowed into Old English from medieval Latin tolōneum ‘place where tolls are collected’, an alteration of late Latin telōneum. this in turn was borrowed from Greek telṓnion, a derivative of télos ‘tax’. The ancestry of toll ‘ring a bell’ is more conjectural. It may be the same word as the long-obsolete toll ‘pull’, which went back to an Old English *tollian.
