Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An inland tax or duty imposed on certain commodities of home production and consumption, as spirits, tobacco, etc., or on their manufacture and sale.
  • noun That branch or department of the civil service which is connected with the levying of such duties. In the United States this office is called the Office of Internal Revenue.
  • Of or pertaining to the excise: as, excise acts; excise commissioners.
  • To lay or impose a duty on; levy an excise on.
  • To impose upon; overcharge.
  • To cut out or off: as, to excise a tumor.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To cut out or off; to separate and remove.
  • transitive verb To lay or impose an excise upon.
  • transitive verb Prov. Eng. To impose upon; to overcharge.
  • noun In inland duty or impost operating as an indirect tax on the consumer, levied upon certain specified articles, as, tobacco, ale, spirits, etc., grown or manufactured in the country. It is also levied to pursue certain trades and deal in certain commodities. Certain direct taxes (as, in England, those on carriages, servants, plate, armorial bearings, etc.), are included in the excise. Often used adjectively
  • noun engraving That department or bureau of the public service charged with the collection of the excise taxes.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To cut out; to remove.
  • verb rare To perform certain types of female circumcision.
  • noun A tax charged on goods produced within the country (as opposed to customs duties, charged on goods from outside the country).
  • verb To impose an excise tax on something.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a tax that is measured by the amount of business done (not on property or income from real estate)
  • verb levy an excise tax on
  • verb remove by cutting
  • verb remove by erasing or crossing out or as if by drawing a line

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle Dutch excijs (under the influence of Latin excisus), accijs, from Old French acceis.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin excisus, past participle of excīdō ("cut out"), from ex ("out of, from") + caedō ("cut"), via French exciser.

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Examples

  • [4] Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines EXCISE "a hateful tax, levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the _common judges_ of property, but by _wretches_ hired by those to whom excise is paid;" and, in the _Idler_ (No. 65) he calls a _commissioner of excise_ "one of the _lowest_ of all human beings."

    The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 20, No. 572, October 20, 1832 Various

  • Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, offered several amendments to the Baucus proposal to kill nearly $10 billion in excise taxes on the insurance industry, medical device manufacturers, clinical laboratories and manufacturers of imported brand drugs.

    Baucus plans changes to his own health care proposal 2009

  • Ok I am with Health care reform and hope they pass something but the Canadian's have national Healthcare because they pay for it not just in excise taxes on cigarettes but also higher income taxes much hire.

    President Obama meets with Canadian Prime Minister Harper 2009

  • The proposed increase in excise tax is (in my opinion).

    Wine In Grocery Stores: Coercion? Boycotts? Intimidation? 2009

  • Two quick defenses of 230: (1) What content do people want to excise from the internet?

    Archive 2009-03-01 Rebecca Tushnet 2009

  • Words that sneak up on you like thieves and which you have to excise from the manuscript?

    Word Choice marycrawford 2005

  • He excoriates the McSweeney's crowd and "the ridiculous dithering of John Barth ... [and] the reductive cardboard constructions of Donald Barthelme," and would excise from the modern canon "nearly all of Gaddis, Pynchon, DeLillo," and — while he's at it — "the diarrheic flow of words that is Ulysses ... the incomprehensible ramblings of late Faulkner and the sterile inventions of late Nabokov."

    New & Noteworthy 2004

  • He excoriates the McSweeney's crowd and "the ridiculous dithering of John Barth ... [and] the reductive cardboard constructions of Donald Barthelme," and would excise from the modern canon "nearly all of Gaddis, Pynchon, DeLillo," and — while he's at it — "the diarrheic flow of words that is Ulysses ... the incomprehensible ramblings of late Faulkner and the sterile inventions of late Nabokov."

    New & Noteworthy 2004

  • But in Massachusetts, they have perverted the word excise to mean a tax on all liquors, whether paid in the moment of importation or at a later moment, and on nothing else.

    Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 2 Thomas Jefferson 1784

  • Given that rich people consume a smaller portion of their income, they’ll end up paying a smaller percentage of their income in excise taxes.

    Matthew Yglesias » Somewhat Popular Deficit Reduction 2010

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