levy

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈlɛ.vi/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛvi
• Homophone: levee

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

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

1. (transitive) To impose (a tax or fine) to collect monies due, or to confiscate property.

   to levy a tax

   • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     In August, the company also announced that it would begin to levy fines on other vendors on its platform who over-package their products.

2. To raise or collect by assessment; to exact by authority.
   • 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]:

     If they do this […] my ransom, then, / Will soon be levied.

3. To draft someone into military service.
4. To raise; to collect; said of troops, to form into an army by enrollment, conscription. etc.
   • 1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI):

     Augustine […] inflamed Ethelbert, king of Kent, to levy his power, and to war against them.

5. To wage war.
6. To raise, as a siege.
   • 1659, T[itus] Livius [i.e., Livy], “(please specify the book number)”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Romane Historie […], London: […] W. Hunt, for George Sawbridge, […], →OCLC:

     Albeit hee saw that the siege was levied

7. (law) To erect, build, or set up; to make or construct; to raise or cast up.
   • 1619, Michael Dalton, The Countrey Justice:

     The new levying or inhancing of Weares Mills

levy (plural levies)

1. The act of levying.
   1. A conscription action.

      Hyponym: levy en masse

      • 1835-1847, Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece

        A levy of all the men left under sixty.

2. The things or people so levied.
   1. A tax.
      1. A tax paid in money.
         • 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XII, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:

           The Irish levies.

         • 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^[2], →ISSN:

           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).

      2. A tax in kind.
   2. Requisitioned supplies.
   3. A body of conscripts.
      • 1978, James Burke, Connections, Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 48:

        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].

Contraction of elevenpence.

levy (plural levies)

1. (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.

• Levi

• Elvy, vley

lev- +‎ -y; from the same root as leveä (“wide”).^[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈleʋy/, [ˈle̞ʋy]
• Rhymes: -eʋy
• Syllabification^(key): le‧vy
• Hyphenation^(key): le‧vy

levy

1. plate (thin, flat object of uniform thickness)
   1. sheet (thin, flat layer of solid material)
   2. slab (thick, flat piece of material)
2. board (flat construction material supplied in sheets, such as chipboard, or a sheet of such material)
3. (computing, electronics) disk (device for storing data)
4. (music) recording, disc (piece of music stored on a disc, or a disc on which music is saved)
5. ellipsis of keittolevy (“hotplate”)

• (plate): laatta
• (musical recording): levytys (music); savikiekko, vinyyli, äänilevy (physical disc)

• (recording): älppäri, pitkäsoittolevy, single

• “levy”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[3] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2 July 2023

• elvy