Word
excise
Phoneticsex·cise
/ˈɛksaɪz/
Definitions
01a tax on goods
n. a tax paid to the government on specific goods made or sold within a country, such as petrol, tobacco, or alcohol.
n. an internal tax levied on the manufacture, sale, or consumption of specific commodities within a country. Uncountable in its general sense; countable when referring to specific types of these taxes.
“The government decided to increase the excise on tobacco to discourage smoking.”
“Economists argued that raising the excise on luxury vehicles would generate significant revenue without disproportionately affecting lower-income households.”
Technical
Usage
Often used in the phrase 'excise duty' or 'excise tax'.
02to remove by cutting
v. to remove something completely by cutting it out, such as a part of a body during surgery or a sentence from a book.
v. to remove a section or part by cutting; used in surgical, editorial, or metaphorical contexts. Transitive — requires a direct object.
“The editor told the author to excise the last two chapters to make the book shorter.”
“The surgeon had to excise the damaged tissue to prevent the infection from spreading to the surrounding healthy muscle.”
Formal
Teaching tip
In editorial contexts, this is a more formal and precise alternative to 'cut' or 'delete'.
Real-World Examples
“From September 1st, the Government is planning to phase out fuel excise cuts which were brought in following the national fuel protests which brought the country to a standstill in April.” Etymology
From Middle Dutch excijs, altered under the influence of Latin excisus (“cut out, removed”), from earlier accijs (“tax”), from Old French acceis (“tax, assessment”) (whence modern French accise), from Vulgar Latin *accensum, ultimately from Latin ad + census (“tax, census”).
From French exciser, from Latin excisus, past participle of excīdō (“cut out”), from ex (“out of, from”) + caedō (“cut”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Word family
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/excise