The U.S. administration’s recent imposition of new tariff rates on various countries has been trailed by various debates in both economic and political circles. Yet, an old video of former President Donald Trump has resurfaced, adding a linguistic dimension to the ongoing discourse. The clip recorded during a conversation with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait in front of business executives, Trump, says, “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff.’”
What is this tariff?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, this presidential favourite first appeared in English in 1592. Though not your everyday word—registering around ten occurrences per million words in modern English, as the Oxford English Dictionary noted—its journey across time and space is remarkable. From its Arabic roots, it passed through Persian and Turkish tongues, filtered into Latinized Italian, crossed into French, and finally arrived in English, where it now sits crowned as a term of endearment in the Trumpian lexicon.
The semantic evolution of tariff is as telling as its political history. Its etymological roots lie in classical Arabic, where the triliteral root ع-ر-ف (ʿa-r-f) conveyed meanings of knowledge and recognition. From this root, the noun taʿrīf (notice, definition, or description) is formed. After the birth of Islam, the word joined the expanding Arab-Muslim vocabulary; it entered Persian as taʿrefe (تعرفه), with the meaning “a fixed price” or “receipt.”
Under the Ottomans, the term became taʿrife, denoting a price list or customs schedule—thus anchoring the semantic root of what would become Donald Trump’s favourite. Following the conquest of Istanbul, as the state sought to regulate the flow of goods across its vast domains, these customs duties were formally listed as taʿrife. The term survives in modern Turkish as “Gümrük Tarife Cetveli,” referring to customs schedules, and colloquially, a tarife still means a chart showing prices.
But language, like trade, is rarely confined. As European powers wrestled with the economic prowess of the Ottomans, the word seeped into their vocabularies—appearing in Middle Latin as tariffe, likely in connection with trade registries, and later in Italian as tariffa, where it came to signify imposed prices and levies. French adopted it as tarif, still in use today to denote price or cost, while the specific meaning of a customs duty is more precisely termed droit de douane. It was in 16th-century English that the word arrived as tariff, and in that context, it took on a more focused economic sense: a duty imposed on imports and exports.
Thus, the word tariff charts not merely a lexical journey but a narrative of commerce, governance, and the intricate exchanges between civilisations. It serves as a linguistic ledger of the world’s long-standing trade relationships, revealing how Europe, in its formative economic years, engaged in an intellectual commerce with the East—importing not only spices and silks but regulatory thought and procedural formality. Indeed, the trade lexicon of modern European languages is punctuated with terms of Arabic origin: carat from qīrāṭ, caravan from qairawān. Not to mention a whole vocabulary of goods: sugar, cotton, coffee—and a list that continues far beyond.
The prominence of the Muslim world in early trade regulation is also embedded in one of the more romantic theories about the origin of the word tariff. Some trace it to the port of Tarifa in southern Spain, itself named after Tarif b. Malik, a military commander under the command of Tariq b. Ziyad. According to this account, the concept of levying duties on merchant vessels was institutionalised at this very entry point into Muslim al-Andalus. Whether myth or etymological fact, the tale shows that the Muslim world, long before modern globalisation, set the terms—literally and economically—of trade.
Tariffs and World Politics
Be that as it may, beyond semantics and the interplay of civilisations, the concept of tariffs has also played a decisive role in the politics of resistance and self-determination. After colonising North America, the British Crown did not intend an independent economy on the continent. Instead, the colonies were to remain economically tethered to the metropole—prohibited from imposing their own tariffs or crafting autonomous fiscal policies. It is no coincidence that shortly after the American Revolution, one of the first legislative acts under President George Washington was the Tariff Act of 1789, which set a uniform 5% duty on all imports. Over time, this rate would climb to 49%, prompted by Northern manufacturers who sought protection from British industrial dominance. In this way, the tariff became more than a tax but a tool of economic liberation, shielding emerging industries from the shadows of empire.
As we trace the word’s journey through dictionaries and docks, from taʿrīf to tariff, we uncover more than linguistic transformation; we witness a shift from trade to protectionism, from commerce to resistance. What began as a word rooted in “knowing” gradually evolved into one associated with taxing and regulation. And now, perhaps, in the rhetorical hands of Donald Trump, we are witnessing yet another turn in its semantic arc: from taxation to a kind of economic vengeance. Will this make a new meaning? Time will tell. But what is certain is that behind even the simplest words lie histories of power, identity, and struggle.
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