What does excise mean?
Word: Excise
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Excise means a government tax on certain goods made or sold within a country.
How do you spell excise?
Syllables: ex - cise
Tricky part: Pupils hear the x and think it covers the s sound too, so they drop the letter that follows it and write exise.
Watch out for: exise, exsise
Memory tip: Picture x and c as two tax officers who always travel as a pair: where one goes in this word, the other stands right beside it.
Excise in a sentence
Example 1: Factories pay excise on certain products before those products reach the shops.
Example 2: The finance minister announced a small cut in excise in the annual budget.
Example 3: Our economics chapter explains how excise differs from customs duty.
Fun Fact
The Scottish poet Robert Burns once earned his living as an excise officer, checking how much tax was owed on goods.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Cookie
Insert the correct pair of letters to form a word:
exc_s_
a) i, a
b) y, e
c) i, e
d) e, e
Show answer
c) i, e. The vowel in the middle says its own name, and a final letter you cannot hear closes the word.
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
Our teacher explained that the excise on petrol brings the goverment a large sum every year.
a) petrol
b) goverment
c) excise
d) teacher
Show answer
b) goverment. Government keeps the n of govern before its ment.
Mingle-Mangle
Form a meaningful word from the jumbled letters:
seicxe
a) excite
b) excuse
c) excise
d) exhale
Show answer
c) excise. Look for the letter each wrong option needs and cannot find: a u, a t and an h.
Spell-o-Spell
Choose the correctly spelt word:
a) tarrif
b) bugdet
c) revenew
d) excise
Show answer
d) excise. Tariff has one r and two f's, revenue ends in ue, and budget has its d before the g.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. What does a government gain from excise?
a) money for public services
b) votes for its party
c) land for new farms
d) teachers for rural schools
Show answer
a) money for public services
2. A headline says excise on petrol has gone up. Drivers will probably notice ____.
a) higher prices at the pump
b) cleaner air in the cities
c) shorter queues on highways
d) fewer petrol stations
Show answer
a) higher prices at the pump
