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Blackadder vocabulary
219 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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window tax
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► definition
Definition:[1696 - 1851] British Isles[1798 - 1926] Francea property tax based on the number of windows in a residence. It has the unintended consequence of the lower classes blocking out their windows to avoid paying the tax.
photo: By Kim Traynor - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16207237
► uses
Uses:
Blackadder: We must buy Dunny-on-the-Wold at once and thus control the voter. I shall need a thousand pounds.
George: A thousand pounds? I thought you said it was a tuppenny-ha'penny place.
Blackadder: Well, yes, sir, the land will cost tuppence-ha'penny, but there are many other factors to be considered: stamp duty, window tax, swamp insurance, hen food, dog biscuits, cow ointment -- the expenses are endless.
BBC. Blackadder, season 2: Dish and Dishonesty
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When the young visitors are shown around Sotherton in Mansfield Park, Jane Austen comments at one point that they were not shown the chapel until after "having visited many more rooms than could be supposed to be of any other use than to contribute to the window tax."
Daniel Pool. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew.
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PITT'S PICTURE. A window stopt up on the inside, to save the tax imposed in that gentleman's administration.
WINDOW PEEPER. A collector of the window tax.
Francis Grose. 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
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‘You miss the imposts of your country. You miss the house dues?’ observed Chollop.
‘And the houses—rather,’ said Mark.
‘No window dues here, sir,’ observed Chollop.
Charles Dickens. Martin Chuzzlewit (1844)
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If the fixture of Momus’s glass in the human breast, according to the proposed emendation of that arch-critick, had taken place,——first, This foolish consequence would certainly have followed,—That the very wisest and very gravest of us all, in one coin or other, must have paid window-money every day of our lives.
Laurence Sterne. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759)
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