Word.ws English Dictionary

levy

/ˈlɛ.vi/

levy verb: to impose (a tax or fine) to collect monies due, or to confiscate property.

Verb

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
    • In August, the company also announced that it would begin to levy fines on other vendors on its platform who over-package their products.2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian
  2. To raise or collect by assessment; to exact by authority.
    • If they do this […] my ransom, then, / Will soon be levied.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...
  3. To draft someone into military service.
  4. To raise; to collect; said of troops, to form into an army by enrollment, conscription. etc.
    • Augustine […] inflamed Ethelbert, king of Kent, to levy his power, and to war against them.1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI)
  5. To wage war.
  6. To raise, as a siege.
    • Albeit hee saw that the siege was levied1659, 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
  7. To erect, build, or set up; to make or construct; to raise or cast up.
    • The new levying or inhancing of Weares Mills1619, Michael Dalton, The Countrey Justice

Noun (1)

levy (plural levies)

  1. The act of levying.
    1. A conscription action.
      • A levy of all the men left under sixty.1835-1847, Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece
  2. A tax paid in money.
    • The Irish levies.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...
    • 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).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, →ISSN
  3. A tax in kind.
  4. Requisitioned supplies.
  5. A body of conscripts.
    • 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...1978, James Burke, Connections, Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 48
  6. (obsolete, slang) A shilling.

Noun (2)

levy (plural levies)

  1. (Pennsylvania, US, Virginia, obsolete, Maryland) The Spanish real of one eighth of a dollar, valued at elevenpence when the dollar was rated at seven shillings and sixpence.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Levy

Levy

  1. A Jewish surname from Hebrew.
    • On some level, the filmmakers behind Monster Trucks must have recognized the ill fit of Till playing a teenager, because they cast Jane Levy, a 27-year-old who can pass for younger but not a decade younger, as Meredith, a nerdy classmate of Tripp’s who moons over him as she insists on making an...2017 January 12, Jesse Hassenger, “A literal monster truck is far from the stupidest thing about Monster Trucks”, in The Onion AV Club, archived from the original on 27 Jan 2017
  2. A male given name.
  3. An unincorporated community in Washington County, Missouri, United States.
  4. An unincorporated community in Jasper County, South Carolina, United States.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Levy

Levy

  1. A surname from Czech.

Proper noun (3) capitalized: Levy

Levy

  1. A surname from Irish.

levy meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

levy in Hindi

act of levying
उगाही ugāhī

levy in Tamil

வரி, தீர்வை

levy in Urdu

چندہ, محصول, محصول لگانا, محصول لینا

levy in Bengali

কর, চাঁদা, খাজনা, সংগ্রহ, শুল্ক, সংগৃহীত সৈন্যগণ
More languagesFewer languages
levy in Malayalam
കരം ചുമത്തുക, സൈന്യത്തിൽ ചേർക്കുക
levy in Kannada
ಕರವಿಧಿಸುವುದು, ತೆರಿಗೆ ವಸೂಲಿ, ಸೇನಾ ಸಂಗ್ರಹಣೆ, ಕಡ್ಡಾಯವಾಗಿ ಸೈನ್ಯಕ್ಕೆ ಸೇರ್ಪಡೆ
levy in Malay
levi

Examples of levy in a sentence

  • Charter townships are able to levy millage on the residents without a vote of the people.
  • Corporate taxes were levied on capital or net income, subject to an annual minimum.
  • Tax is levied against income from sales.

All 34 example sentences with levy

Forms of levy

Verb
third-person singular presentlevies
present participlelevying
past participlelevied
pastlevied
Noun
plurallevies
Proper noun
alternative formLevie

Past tense of levy: levied

Plural of levy: levies

Origin of levy

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

Contraction of elevenpence.

From the biblical name Levi. Unlike the biblical spelling, which descended through continuous liturgical traditions that preserved final secondary stress (causing it to shift to IPA⁽ᵏᵉʸ⁾: /ˈliːvaɪ/), the surname was re-introduced into English after the 1650s via French Lévy and German Levy. The pronunciation IPA⁽ᵏᵉʸ⁾: /ˈlɛvi/ arose from assimilation to the common noun levy, while IPA⁽ᵏᵉʸ⁾: /ˈliːvi/ preserves the historical long vowel of the first syllable without final stress.

Words formed from levy

Phrases with levy

Words that rhyme with levy

Questions about levy

What does levy mean?
Levy means to impose (a tax or fine) to collect monies due, or to confiscate property.
What is levy in Hindi?
Levy in Hindi is उगाही (ugāhī). See Levy meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is levy?
Levy can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce levy?
Levy is pronounced /ˈlɛ.vi/ (UK).
What is the past tense of levy?
The past tense of levy is levied.

Words near levy in the dictionary

  1. levulosan
  2. levulosans
  3. levulose
  4. levuloses
  5. levulosuria
  6. levy
  7. Levy County
  8. levy en masse
  9. levy in mass
  10. Levy-Hollister syndrome
  11. levying

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: levy (page history and authors); Levy (page history and authors); levy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); levy (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); levy (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); levy (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); levy (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-levy.wav.

Cite this entry: “levy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/levy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.