# Etymology of "taxi" (noun and verb)



## Claudio Gerhardt

What's the origin of the word "TAXI"?


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## elroy

Claudio Gerhardt said:
			
		

> What's the origin of the word "TAXI"?





> taxi
> 1907, shortening of taximeter cab (introduced in London in March 1907), from taximeter "automatic meter to record the distance and fare" (1898), from Fr. taximètre, from Ger. Taxameter (1890), coined from M.L. taxa "tax, charge." An earlier Eng. form was taxameter (1894), used in horse-drawn cabs. The verb is first recorded 1911, from earlier noun use as slang for "aircraft." Taxicab is also first attested 1907. Taxi dancer "woman whose services may be hired at a dance hall" is recorded from 1930. Taxi squad in U.S. football is 1966, from a former Cleveland Browns owner who gave his reserves jobs with his taxicab company to keep them paid and available ["Dictionary of American Slang"], but other explanations (short-term hire or shuttling back and forth from the main team) seem possible.



Source: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=taxi


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## JLanguage

Claudio Gerhardt said:
			
		

> What's the origin of the word "TAXI"?


 
From the OED Online:


> Taxi-cab: [Short for TAXIMETER _cab_, and itself shortened to TAXI _n._]
> 
> Taximeter: [ad. F. _taximètre_, f. _taxe_ tariff + _-mètre_ = -METER. The form _taxameter_, used a few years earlier, was from German: cf. med.L. _taxa_ tax. (An earlier German name from _c_ 1875 was _taxanom_.)]


 
EDIT: The date of first recorded use is 1907 from the Daily Chronical:
*



1907 Daily Chron. 26 Mar. 6/7 Every journalist..has his idea of what the vehicle should be called. It has been described as the (1) taxi, (2) motor-cab, (3) taxi-cab, (4) taximo,..(7) taximeter-cab. 

Click to expand...

 *

-Jonathan.


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## Linnets

Hi. I've always thought that _taxi_ derived from French _taximètre_ or from German _Taxameter_, both from Medieval Latin _taxa_, from Classical Latin _taxāre_, "to value". Recently, I have found another hypothesis usually rejected as an after-the fact creation that is popular especially in Germany. It is about an Italian family called Tasso or de Tassis (probably a Latinized version of the surname) who had in their coat of arms a tower (_torre_) and a badger (_tasso_). These heraldical elements were the source for their Germanized surname Thurn und Taxis. They had the monopoly of the Imperial mail system from 1490 to 1867.


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## sokol

This theory is not mentioned on the German Wiki main page about Thurn und Taxis, but there's a short reference to this in the related discussion. (An anonymous person suggests this etymology and asks for evidence of any kind but can't offer any himself.)

Myself I've never heard about this etymology "taxi" < "Thurn und Taxis Post", and as their postal service was nationalised by the Prussian king in 1867 I think it will be very difficult to find any proof for this theory at all.
Also Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch doesn't even mention the "Thurn und Taxis" theory.

So I would reject this as folk etymology unless someone could come up with really good evidence.


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## berndf

Linnets said:


> They had the monopoly of the Imperial mail system from 1490 to 1867.


A little side note: The monopoly obviously existed only until the dissolution of the empire in 1806. The Thurn und Taxis mail continued to exist until 1867 but not as a monopoly.

I agree with Sokol that _Thurn und Taxis>Taxi_ is most probably just folk etymology.


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## Wilma_Sweden

I have only found evidence for the German Wilhelm Bruhn as the inventor of the modern taximeter in the early 1890s (G: taxameter, F: taximètre), from which the word taxi was derived. Most dictionaries suggest the French word as the origin for the word taxi in English, while other languages may have taken it from English or French. 

Presumably, Bruhn, or whoever held the German patent, would have named the contraption, and I am convinced that the most logical origin would be a Latin word for a fare-measuring device such as taxameter rather than Thurn & Taxis.

/Wilma


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## cajzl

Side note:

Latin verb *taxare* probably originated from the Greek verb *tassō* τάσσω, fut. τάξω (= to arrange in orderly manner, also to assess); the related noun *taxis* τάξις, pl. τάξεις (= order, also duty) is strikingly similar to the word *taxi*.


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## Outsider

_Taxare_ is obviously related to "tax".
However, there is also a prefix _*taxo-/taxi-*_ of Greek origin, used in many European languages in words like "taxonomy" and "taxidermist"...


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## sunyaer

The word "taxi" also has this meaning: To move slowly on the ground or on the surface of the water before takeoff 
or after landing.

What is the origin of this meaning?


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## entangledbank

I've always wondered this myself. It looks like it was aircraft slang that was adopted very soon after the motor vehicle use, as the _OED_ gives these earliest dates:

1907 'taxi' meaning a car for hire
1911 'taxi' meaning a small passenger aeroplane [not used today]
1911 'taxi' meaning driving an aeroplane along a runway


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## PaulQ

Hmm... on first sight and after a not-too-helpful trip to the OED, the idea of _*to taxi* = Of an aeroplane, etc., or its pilot: to travel slowly along the ground or water *under the machine's own power.*_ (my emphasis) is first recorded 

"1911   Aeroplane 8 June 8/1   "The only way to get [his] 'bus into the air is to ‘taxi’ to the sewage farm remou and get pulled off the ground by it!"

The verb seems to have come from the idea that taxis were distinguished from the various earlier, but then present, forms of *horse-drawn* cab, by the fact that they were "*horseless*" (cf 'horseless carriage' - an early term for a car) and moved by themselves - i.e. under their own power.

Thus *to taxi* was used to mean "under its own power" as opposed to "be towed/pulled/pushed by something else."


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## cyberpedant

Is there no relation to the Greek ταχύ-ς (tachus) "swift" (as in "tachycardia")? I've found no documentation for this, but it would seem almost obvious.


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## PaulQ

I would not have thought so, as the definition of *to taxi* involves, "slowly"


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## cyberpedant

I was thinking more of its beginning with "taxi-cab," a vehicle which allows one to move faster (than walking). The taxiing an airplane does, while slower than taking off or landing is still rapid compared to walking. But there's also the Greek "τάξις" (taxis) meaning arrangement, order, which seems to have little to do with vehicles.


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## Christopher Reid

The origin of Cab is abbreviation of Cabriolet (Shorter OED 1973 edn.).  Orig. horse drawn passenger vehicle for public hire.  Taxi is shortened version of taxi(meter)-cab. To taxi is to travel in a taxi-cab.


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## half-fast

cyberpedant said:


> I was thinking more of its beginning with "taxi-cab," a vehicle which allows one to move faster (than walking). The taxiing an airplane does, while slower than taking off or landing is still rapid compared to walking. But there's also the Greek "τάξις" (taxis) meaning arrangement, order, which seems to have little to do with vehicles.



I always thought it was of Greek origin.  And to take your post a little further, i always thought of the Greek word "taxidi", which means trip or journey.  That has to be it.


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## berndf

half-fast said:


> I always thought it was of Greek origin.  And to take your post a little further, i always thought of the Greek word "taxidi", which means trip or journey.  That has to be it.


The explanation in etymonline sounds sufficiently believable to me:
_1911, of airplanes, from slang use of taxi(n.) for "aircraft," or from or reinforced "in allusion to the way a taxi driver slowly cruises when looking for fares" [Barnhart]. _​
As to the origin of the noun _taxi_, the given explanations make sense. The taximeter was invented in the 1880s by a German engineer _Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Bruhn_ who worked at the time for _Ingenieurbüro Westendarp & Pieper_ in Hamburg. You can easily find references to the device under that name in official publication from the 1890s (example, example). As described, it is from med. Latin _taxa_ + Greek _metron_. In German _Taxe _(< French _taxe_) means _tariff, service charge _or _estimate of the the value of an object_. _Taxameter _then entered French as _taxametère _where was "corrected" to _tax*i*mètre _by philologist Théodore Reinach to allude to the Greek noun _taxis _(see entry in in TLFi), from which the meaning _taxe=estimate_ is probably derived. The word then entered English in this form.


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## sotos

sunyaer said:


> The word "taxi" also has this meaning: To move *slowly* on the ground ...


"TAXI" makes a joke in Greek if pronounced a-la-greca as ταχί, which means _fast_ (although misspelled). 
The origin of med.lat. "taxa" (tax) seems to be the Greek τάξις (order, class), used in biology for the _taxo_-nomy of organisms. Maybe from the classification of people in income categories, for the purpose of taxation.  From v. τάσσω/τάττω (put in order).


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## fdb

sotos said:


> "TAXI" makes a joke in Greek if pronounced a-la-greca as ταχί, which means _fast_ (although misspelled).
> The origin of med.lat. "taxa" (tax) seems to be the Greek τάξις (order, class), used in biology for the _taxo_-nomy of organisms. Maybe from the classification of people in income categories, for the purpose of taxation.  From v. τάσσω/τάττω (put in order).



I have heard that joke too. The point is that taxis in Greece actually have TAXI (in Latin script) written on them. The correct pronunciation is /taksi/ of course, but the proverbial illiterate Greek is imagined to pronounce it like ταχύ "fast".

And yes, "tax, taxonomy" etc. do derive from the Greek τάξις.


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## Perseas

_One day in early July 1894, two entrepreneurs from Hamburg named Bruhn and Westendorf attended a meeting at the Board of Trade in London concerning their device, called a taxameter-fare indicator._
[...]
_The German name of *Taxameter*, at first adopted in Britain, was taken from Taxe, a charge or levy. After the device became common in Paris (another city that was well ahead of London), the French created the term *taximètre* for it, from taxe, a tariff (the e changed to i through the influence of the famous Hellenist Théodore Reinach in a letter to Le Temps newspaper in 1906, in which he advocated going back to the classical Greek taxis from which both the German and French words ultimately derived)._
World Wide Words: Taxi


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## berndf

*Moderator note: This thread resulted from a merger of two old threads which have been extended over the years. That is why explanations may at times be repetitive (like #18 and #21). They cover both, the noun taxi (as in taxicab) and the verb taxi (of an airplane).

Sorry for that.*


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## littlepond

berndf said:


> The explanation in etymonline sounds sufficiently believable to me:
> _1911, of airplanes, from slang use of taxi(n.) for "aircraft," or from or reinforced "in allusion to the way a taxi driver slowly cruises when looking for fares" [Barnhart]. _​



If "taxi" as verb for moving planes comes from "in allusion to the way a taxi driver slowly cruises when looking for fares" or from slang use of taxi for aircraft, what was the word used before that then for planes' slow-moving motion, if there was one?


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## berndf

littlepond said:


> before that then for planes' slow-moving motion, if there was one?


How many airports with airplanes taxiing do you now that existed already before 1911?


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## littlepond

Well, I wouldn't have thought that even in 1911, many airplanes were taxiing ... but if the word arose already in 1911, maybe some were?


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## Graciela J

Why should there have been a word for that? Maybe they just said "the plane moved at slow speed on the runway", or something like that.


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## littlepond

^ Thanks, was just wondering if there was one. Maybe, there was none, the times didn't demand one.


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