/ˈtærɪf/·noun·c. 1591 in English, from Italian tariffa; Italian use attested from the 13th century; Arabic origin from 8th–10th century CE.·Established
Origin
From Arabic ta'rīfa (تعريفة, 'notification'), from theroot '-r-f ('to know'). A tariff is etymologically an act of making known — the public announcement of dues — via Italian tariffa through medieval Mediterranean trade into English by the 1590s.
Definition
An official list or schedule of duties or taxes imposed by a government on imported or exported goods, from Arabic ta'rīfa meaning 'notification' or 'making known'.
The Full Story
Arabic8th–10th century CEwell-attested
TheArabicnoun ta'rīfa (تعريفة) derives from the verb 'arrafa (عرّف), the second-form stem of the trilateral root '-r-f (ع-ر-ف), meaning fundamentally 'to know' or 'to perceive'. The second-form verb 'arrafa means 'to cause to know', 'to notify', 'to make known', 'to define'. From this, ta'rīfa carried the meanings of 'notification', 'definition', 'specification' and, critically in commercial contexts, 'an inventory or schedule of fees and duties'. In the mercantile world of the medieval Islamic Mediterranean
Did you know?
The Spanish port of Tarifa — where Moorish rulers levied duties on shipspassing through the Strait of Gibraltar — shares an Arabic origin with the word tariff, though independently: the city is named after the Berber scout Ṭārif ibn Mallūk (710 CE), while the word comes from the Arabic verbal noun ta'rīfa ('notification'). Sailors confused thetwo, and the confusion stuck — making Tarifa the only town in the world that appears to have named a class of international trade policy.
long-distance commerce from the Levant to the Maghreb and the Iberian Peninsula, a ta'rīfa was the official document or proclamation that listed exactly what charges
in the Arabic lexicon: it gives ma'rifa (معرفة, knowledge), 'ārif (عارف, one who knows, a mystic adept), 'irfān (عرفان, intuitive knowledge), and ma'rūf (معروف, that which is known/customary). A tariff is therefore, at its etymological core, not a burden or a penalty, but an act of epistemic clarity — a making-known of obligations, a formal publication of what is owed. Key roots: '-r-f (ع-ر-ف) (Arabic (trilateral root): "to know, to perceive, to recognise — one of the most productive roots in Arabic"), 'arrafa (عرّف) (Arabic (Form II verb): "to make known, to notify, to define, to inform"), ta'rīfa (تعريفة) (Arabic (verbal noun): "a making-known, notification, definition, schedule of fees").
تعريفة (ta'rīfa)(Arabic (source form))tariffa(Italian (borrowed from Arabic via Mediterranean trade))tarifa(Spanish (borrowed from Arabic))tarif(French (borrowed from Italian/Arabic))Tarif(German (borrowed from French))tarief(Dutch (borrowed from French))