taille

See also: Taille and taillé

Contents

English

Etymology

From French taille (“cut”, noun).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /tʌɪ/

Noun

taille (countable and uncountable, plural tailles)

1. (historical) A form of taxation levied on the land of peasants in pre-Revolutionary France.
   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p. 143:

     The main royal tax was the taille, a tax on landed wealth, distributed among the généralités and assessed and levied in a variety of ways, and it was supplemented by a range of other direct taxes [...].

2. (obsolete) A tally; an account scored on a piece of wood.
   • Chaucer

     Whether that he paid or took by taille.

3. (music, obsolete) The tenor voice or part.
4. (music, obsolete) The part for the tenor viol or viola.

Related terms

• tallage (“a tax”)

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for taille in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

Anagrams

• tallie

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Dutch

Etymology

From French taille.

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

taille f, m (plural tailles, diminutive tailletje n)

1. waistline

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French

Etymology

From tailler (“to cut”, verb), from Latin talea (“a cutting”). Compare Italian taglia.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /taj/

• audio

  (file)

Noun

taille f (plural tailles)

1. the act of cutting, pruning, trimming

   Synonym: coupe

2. size

   Synonyms: grandeur, gabarit

3. waist
4. waistline
5. a direct tax levied during the Ancien Régime; tallage

Derived terms

• taillable
• taille de guêpe

Related terms

• tailler

Further reading

• “taille” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

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Middle English

Noun

taille

1. Alternative form of tayl

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Old French

Etymology

Deverbal of taillier.

Noun

taille f (oblique plural tailles, nominative singular taille, nominative plural tailles)

1. cut (act; instance of cutting)
2. cut; wound; incision (result of being cut)
3. cut (of clothing)
4. a count kept by carving notches into a stick
5. (by extension) a count; a tally
6. charge; levy; taxation; tax

Descendants

• English: tally (borrowed)
• French: taille
  • English: taille (borrowed)

References

• Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (taille, supplement)
• taille on the Anglo-Norman On-Line Hub