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''levy'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''levy'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250824222431-00-⌔

levy - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

levy (third-person singular simple present levies, present participle levying, simple past and past participle levied)

  • (transitive) To impose (a tax or fine) to collect monies due, or to confiscate property.
    • ✤ to levy a tax
    • ✤ In August, the company also announced that it would begin to levy fines on other vendors on its platform who over-package their products.1
  • To raise or collect by assessment; to exact by authority.
    • ✤ If they do this […] my ransom, then,/Will soon be levied.2
  • To draft someone into military service.
  • To raise; to collect; said of troops, to form into an army by enrollment, conscription. etc.
    • ✤ Augustine […] inflamed Ethelbert, king of Kent, to levy his power, and to war against them.3
  • To wage war.
  • To raise, as a siege.
    • ✤ *Albeit hee saw that the siege was levied *4
  • (law) To erect, build, or set up; to make or construct; to raise or cast up.
    • ✤ The new levying or inhancing of Weares Mills5

Noun

levy (plural levies)

  • The act of levying.
    • A conscription action.
      • ✤ Hyponym: levy en masse
      • ✤ A levy of all the men left under sixty.6
  • The things or people so levied.
    • A tax.
      • A tax paid in money.
        • ✤ The Irish levies.7
        • ✤ The first is that French people are more concerned about the poor health of their democracy – since the carbon levy they have campaigned for democratic reform (though this has proven harder to deliver than the tax U-turn).8
      • A tax in kind.
    • Requisitioned supplies.
    • A body of conscripts.
      • ✤ To make up for their losses at the battle they [the professional army of Harold II, Anglo-Saxon King of England] had gathered levies of men from the counties they passed through on their way south. […] Ranged alongside these professionals were the levies: farmers and peasants, for the most part, who had been straggling in from all over the southern counties during the previous few days [before the Battle of Hastings in 1066].9
  • (obsolete, slang) A shilling.

Noun

levy (plural levies)

  • (US, obsolete, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia) The Spanish real of one eighth of a dollar, valued at elevenpence when the dollar was rated at seven shillings and sixpence.

Pronunciation

  • (UK, US) IPA: /ˈlɛ.vi/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɛvi
  • Homophone: levee

Etymology 1

From Anglo-Norman leve, from Old French levee, from lever (“to raise”), from Latin lēvāre (“to raise, lift”).

Etymology 2

Contraction of elevenpence.

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian ‎: ↩

  2. 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]: ↩

  3. 1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC,: ↩

  4. 1659, T[itus] Livius [i.e., Livy], “”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Romane Historie […], London: […] W. Hunt, for George Sawbridge, […], →OCLC: ↩

  5. 1619, Michael Dalton, The Countrey Justice: ↩

  6. 1835-1847, Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece ↩

  7. 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XII, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC: ↩

  8. 2023 November 17, Oliver Haynes, “Five years on, the world is failing to learn the gilets jaunes’ lesson about class and climate”, in The Guardian ‎, →ISSN: ↩

  9. 1978, James Burke, Connections, Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 48: ↩

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Secondary

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