Hi.

 

Pretty simple: taxi or taxy?

 

I've seen an increase recently in taxy but have always spelt it with an 'i'.

 

OED says 'Taxi' except in the present participle where a 'y' is acceptable: taxiing or taxying but taxi not taxy. The only OED use for taxy is as a suffix.

 

Where did the use of 'taxy' originate?

 

Cheers,

D

 

 

 

 

Where did the use of 'taxying' with 'taxi' originate? That one looks really stange.

... though not as strange as skiing would: skying?? Isn't that the opposite of landing?

 

One of the citations has taxi-ing, and the earliest that OED can provide have the word in inverted commas. In 1911 I imagine the word was military slang, like 'out of the blue', 'gone for a burton', 'tearing off a strip'.

 

I suspect the origin is in taxi-cab, itself from taximeter, a device for measuring tariffs (I got that one from the dictionary too) but no-one can confirm the slang origin in aviation.

 

D

Off topic, but in England what's generally called a taxi (iet can be hailed in the street )is still legally a hackney carriage from an Act of Parliament dated 1847.

I remember back in the 70s reading that, presumably under that same Act of Parliament, London taxi drivers were still required to carry a supply of hay for their horses.

TAXI....end of discussion  :lol:

 

 

Taxy shouldn't even be a word

Taxy sounds like a brand name for some wax product.

 

"Get your Taxy wax-y over here!"

Edited October 12, 201312 yr by linux731

I'd never seen that form. Looks to be archaic as all the citations are from about a century ago, and now only used in -ing form (taxying). Google search on it only brings up 144,000 hits which, allowing for dictionaries and simple typos, means it's practically a dead word.