the.com/toll
a small tax on existing somewhere, collected by whoever got there first with a gate
means A charge paid for the right to pass over a road or bridge — or, more broadly, the cost or damage something inflicts (as in the toll of a long war), and also the slow ringing of a bell.
from Old English 'toll' meaning a tax or duty, traced back through Latin 'toloneum' (a tollhouse) to Greek 'telōnion,' a tax office, ultimately from 'telos,' meaning tax or due. The bell-ringing sense is a separate thread: the verb 'toll' may come from a Middle English word for pulling or drawing, the idea being that you draw the rope to make the bell sound — so the toll you pay and the toll a bell sounds reached the same spelling by different roads.
- ancient roots
- Romans charged tolls on roads two millennia ago
- death sense
- same word counts both coins and casualties
- bell origin
- to toll once meant to pull a bell rope
- ghost roads
- some tolls outlive the debt they built
- robber barons
- medieval lords chained rivers to extract passage fees
interstate 95 florida — longest toll road in us at 545 miles, connecting maine to miami
chicago skyway — 8.4-mile elevated toll highway generating $500m+ annually for the city
new jersey turnpike — 118-mile toll road opened 1951, one of most heavily trafficked in north america
golden gate bridge — san francisco toll bridge collecting $140m annually from 10m+ vehicles per year