19 August 2013

levy

[lev-ee]

noun, plural lev·ies, verb, lev·ied, lev·y·ing.

noun

1. an imposing or collecting, as of a tax, by authority or force.
2. the amount owed or collected.
3. the conscription of troops.
4. the troops conscripted.
verb (used with object)
5. to impose (a tax): to levy a duty on imports.
6. to conscript (troops).
7. to start or wage (to levy war).
verb (used without object)
8. to seize or attach property by judicial order.

Origin:
1375–1425; late Middle English leve ( e ) < Middle French, noun use of feminine past participle of lever to raise < Latin levāre, akin to levis light; cf. levee2

Related forms
re·lev·y, verb (used with object), re·lev·ied, re·lev·y·ing.
self-lev·ied, adjective
un·lev·ied, adjective

Can be confused: levee, levy.

Synonyms
–  draft, enlist, call-up.

Today’s aphorism

You can cage the singer, but not the song.

– Harry Belafonte

On this day

19 August 14AD – death of Augustus Caesar, founder of the Roman Empire and first Roman Emperor.

19 August 1662 – death of Blaise Pascal, controversial French mathematician, physicist, inventor and writer. Formulated ‘Pascal’s Triangle’, a tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, challenged Aristotle’s followers who claimed that ‘nature abhors a vacuum’. The computer programming language, ‘Pascal’, is named in his honour.

19 August 1900 – start of the first Olympic cricket match, played in Paris. It is the only Olympics in which cricket was played.

19 August 1919 – Afghanistan Independence Day, in which Afghanistan declared its independence from Britain.

19 August – World Humanitarian Day – a day to recognise those who face danger and adversity in order to help others. 19 August was chosen because it is the anniversary of the 2003 bombing of the UN Headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq, which killed Sérgio Vieira de Mello, Special Representative for Secretary-General to Iraq and 21 of his colleagues.