The origin of the word taxi: where it comes from and what it means

The word taxi is short for taximeter, the device that calculates the price of the journey. The Spanish word taxímetro came from the French taximètre, an adaptation of the German Taxameter, the name of the meter developed in Germany in 1891. Its first part refers to the idea of a charge or fare, and the second, -meter, comes from the Greek métron, “measure”. Literally, a taxi is a “fare measurer”: the vehicle ended up named after the device it carried inside.

When the first motorised hire cars appeared, what set them apart from horse-drawn carriages was not just the engine but the meter. That is why they were named after it, with different formulas in each language:

• In Spanish people spoke of the autotaxi or of a car with a taximeter.
• In English the taxicab was born, that is, a cab with a taximeter.
• In French, taxi-auto and similar formulas.

As usually happens with long words in everyday use, they were all shortened. Within a few years, in almost every language, the vehicle came to be called simply a taxi. Meanwhile, taximeter continued to refer to the device.

Dictionaries differ slightly on the first part of the word. The dictionary of the Real Academia Española (the Royal Spanish Academy) links the French taximètre to the Greek táxis in the sense of “assessment”. Other etymological dictionaries derive it from the medieval Latin taxa, “tax, charge”, itself related to the Latin verb meaning “to evaluate”. In either explanation the underlying sense is the same: the taximeter is the device that measures what has to be paid.

That is why some of the explanations going around, such as the idea that “taxi” means “order” or “class”, only tell half the story: the Greek táxis does have those senses, but what matters in this word is the idea of assessing a charge.

If you are interested in the device that gave the vehicle its name, in the origin of the taximeter we tell the story of its invention, and in how a taximeter works we explain what it calculates today.

Before the word taxi existed, each city had its own name for the hire carriage, and some have survived:

• Cab: the English abbreviation of cabriolet, the horse-drawn cabriolet. It is still a synonym for taxi in English today.
• Hackney: the traditional name of the London hire carriage, which still appears in British regulations.
• Fiacre: the Parisian hire carriage, a word that passed into other languages.
• Simón and manuela: the Madrid names for horse-drawn hire carriages, which we explain in the fascinating history of the taxi in Madrid.
• Coche de punto: the carriage that waited at a stand in the street.

Taxi is one of the most international words there is. It is written the same or almost the same in English, French, German, Italian (also tassì), Portuguese (táxi) and many other languages, and it adapts to local pronunciation in languages such as Japanese. For a traveller, it is one of the few words that works at almost any airport in the world.

In turn, taxi has given rise to other everyday words and expressions:

• Taxista: Spanish for the person who drives a taxi.
• Radiotaxi: the taxi ordered through a dispatch radio.
• Bajada de bandera: the initial charge for the ride, named after the little flag on the first taximeters.
• Taxear: in aviation language, the movement of the aircraft along the taxiways, a calque of the English to taxi.

If you want to carry on with the history of the service and not just the word, you will find it in the history of taxis.

There is a certain irony here: although the taxi is named after the taximeter, today there are journeys on which the device does not decide the price. On our airport transfers we apply a fixed fare by area, which does not depend on traffic or the route: from inside the M-30 to any Barajas terminal, €33. The other areas are listed on our fares page, and you can book your airport taxi in three steps.