toll

Toll, a charge for passage, and toll, to ring a bell slowly, are separate words; the first is an early Germanic borrowing from Latin, the second perhaps a special use of an old verb meaning to draw or lure.^[1][2][3]

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /təʊl/, US /toʊl/^[4]

toll¹ charge

Etymology

It is inherited from Old English toll (“impost, tribute, passage money”), a variant of toln,^[1][2][3] cognate with Old Norse tollr and German Zoll,^[1][2] usually considered an early Germanic borrowing of Late Latin tolonium (“custom house”),^[2][1][3] from Latin telōnium, from Greek τελώνιον (telṓnion, “tollhouse”), from telṓnēs, tax collector, from télos, tax.^[1][2][3] Another theory makes it native Germanic and related to tell, that which is counted.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A payment or tax exacted by an authority: about 1000, perhaps 963.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English it was a legal term for the right to charge for imports, sales or passage,^[1] and in the obsolete phrase sac and soc, toll and team it is recorded from 1017.^[5] The miller's share of grain for grinding is from about 1386.^[5] A charge for passage along a road or bridge is from the late 15th century.^[1][3] Middle English bride-toll was a fee paid to the lord when a bondswoman married outside the manor.^[1] On old telephone systems a toll call was one made outside the local area.^[1][6] The figurative take its toll, exact a cost, is by 1910,^[1] and the number of casualties of a disaster, the death toll, is a related sense.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1000 – a tax.^[2]
• c. 1386 – the miller's toll.^[5]
• late 15th century – a road toll.^[1]
• 1910 – take its toll.^[1]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A fixed charge for the right to use a road, bridge or tunnel.
2. A charge for a service, such as a long-distance telephone call.
3. The loss or damage caused by something, especially the number of people killed: the death toll.

Verb

1. To charge a toll for using a road or bridge.

Word family

• tollbooth
• tollgate
• tollhouse
• toll road

toll² ring

Etymology

It is Middle English tollen, possibly a special use of the earlier tollen, to draw, lure (probably before 1200, in the Ancrene Riwle),^[2][1][3] a variant of tillen, from Old English -tyllan in betyllan, to lure, and fortyllan, to draw away, seduce,^[2][1][7] words of unknown origin.^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

To ring a bell by pulling a rope: 1452.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline suggests that the link may be the drawing on the bell rope, or the luring of people to church by the bells.^[1] Tolling was used to summon congregations and to announce a death or funeral, and by the late 16th century it had a figurative association with these.^[1] The noun, a stroke of a bell, is also from 1452.^[2][5] The older sense survived in Middleton and Dekker's a mermaid has tolled my son to shipwreck,^[1] and in American dialect to lure game, especially ducks, from 1838.^[1][7]

Timeline

• before 1200 – tollen, to lure.^[2]
• 1452 – to ring a bell.^[2]
• 1838 – to lure game (US).^[1]

Modern meaning

Verb

1. To ring a bell slowly and repeatedly, as for a death.
2. To announce or summon by tolling.
3. (US, Canada) To lure game, especially ducks.

Noun

1. The act or sound of tolling a bell.

Related words

• tell

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
7. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins