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languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu·Mark Liberman·7 months ago
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With all the recent news about tariffs, I wondered where the word came from. So I consulted the OED:

< Italian tariffa ‘arithmetike or casting of accounts’ (Florio), ‘a book of rates for duties’ (Baretti), = Spanish tarifa , Portuguese tarifa , < Arabic taʿrīf notification, explanation, definition, article, < ʿarafa in 1st conj. to notify, make known. So French tarif .

The OED glosses the modern meaning (its Sense 2) as

An official list or schedule setting forth the several customs duties to be imposed on imports and exports; a table or book of rates; any item of such a list, the impost (on any article); also the whole body or system of such duties as established in any country.

The earliest citation for that sense is from 1592.

But interestingly, the word tariff isn't used in the text of the U.S.…

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