Other forms: tolls, tolling, tolled
A toll is the money you must pay to use a bridge, tunnel or road. A toll bridge, pay the toll, toll roads.
Toll booth, toll road and toll bridge are the standard compounds. The other main sense is the number of people killed or hurt: the death toll, a heavy toll — and take its toll means to cause gradual damage: the years took their toll. There is a separate verb toll meaning to ring a bell slowly, especially for a death, which is where for whom the bell tolls comes from.
1nountollMoney paid to use a bridge or road.
“Drivers pay a toll to cross the new bridge.”
2nounnumberThe number of people killed or hurt.
“The death toll rose for about a week.”
3verbringTo ring a bell slowly.
“The church bell tolled slowly as the funeral procession passed.”
toll is a charge or count.
Old English toll came ultimately from Greek telos, a tax — the same word behind the -tele in nothing at all, but genuinely the source of the tax sense. The bell-ringing toll is a separate word of unknown origin.
Middle English
toll
English, today
toll
Built from
From Middle English toll. From Middle English toll, tol, tolle, from Old English toll and toln (“toll, duty, custom”), from Proto-West Germanic toll, tolnu, from Proto-Germanic tullaz, tullō (“that which is counted or told, reckoning”), from Proto-Indo-European del- (“calculation, fraud”). Cognate with stq Tol (“toll”), Dutch tol (“toll”), {{cog|de|
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Travel & Transport