cess
An assessed tax, duty, or levy; billeting.
Noun India, Ireland
- An assessed tax, duty, or levy; billeting.
- EUDOX[US] But what is that which you call Cess? it is a Word sure unused amongst us here; therefore (I pray you) expound the same. IREN[EUS] Cess is none other than that which you yourself called Imposition, but is in a...
- The act provides for a levy of a cess on all coal and coke despatched from collieries in India, at such rate, not less than twenty-five paise and not more than fifty paise per ton, as may be fixed by the Central...
- Therefore it was proposed to levy a cess on local authorities which are entrusted with the duty of supplying water under the law by or under which they are constituted and on certain specified industries. - 2006, The...
- Usually preceded by good or (more commonly) bad: luck or success.
- "Bad cess may attend you, where are you scampering to, you rambunctious"—but she could go no farther; the tears burst from her, and she gave way, without farther resistance, to an explosion of grief. - 1852 November,...
- Midland has had good cess with using minute commercials eight television stations, cited as one example of modernizing its advertising. - 1962, News for Farmer Cooperatives, Information Office, Farm Credit...
- It is good cess to feel the warmth and sincerity of this couple who fill the role of the Queen's representative in Canada. - 1965, Canada Month:
- Bound; measure.
- The poor jade is wrung in the withers out of all cess. - c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First...
Origin
For the first meaning below, the writings of Edmund Spenser, published 1633, point to a borrowing from Irish cís (“tax, tribute, cess, rent”), likely from Latin census. Other senses: Uncertain. Occurs in print at least as early as 1831, when Samuel Lover used the expression as one already long-established. He unambiguously stated the derivation of cess in the malediction bad cess to be an abbreviation of success. The OED speculated that it either was from success or from assessment meaning a military or governmental exaction. The verb is attested in Middle English (cessen).
Forms
Noun rail transport, railways
- The area along either side of a railroad track which is kept at a lower level than the sleeper bottom, in order to provide drainage.
- In April 1923, he was working with a gang of five others in Glasgow on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS). They were told to walk in the cess. But as it wasn't clear, they walked on the sleepers, each...
- A bog, in particular a peat bog.
- A piece of peat, or a turf, particularly when dried for use as fuel.
Origin
Possibly from an archaic dialect word meaning “bog”. According to the OED, from earlier suspiral (“water pipe, setting tank”).
Forms
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Verb Ireland, UK
- To levy a cess.
- ...according to the quantity thereof, we may cess the said rent and allowance issuing thereout. - 1596, Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Irelande:
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Verb law
- To cease; to neglect.
- And therefore, if there be lord, mesne, and tenant, and the tenant doth cess, and the mesne takes a wife and dies, his wife shall not have dower of the tenancy... - 1827, John Perkins, A Profitable Book, Treating of the...
Origin
From Middle French cesser. See cease.