excise

As a noun meaning a tax, excise comes from Middle Dutch excijs, itself a reshaping of accijs ("tax"), from Old French acceis, ultimately from Latin ad + census. That Dutch spelling was nudged toward Latin excisus ("cut out"), which is also where the separate verb excise comes from, via French exciser, from Latin excīdō — ex ("out of") + caedō ("cut").

The tax sense started as a plain word for assessment or levy, but its spelling drifted toward a Latin word meaning "cut out" — perhaps because a tax is something cut from your earnings. Meanwhile the verb kept its own straightforward path, always meaning to cut something away.

The verb excise shares its root, caedō ("to cut"), with the same Latin stem behind excisus — so cutting is baked right into that half of the word's story, even if the tax sense arrived by a different road entirely.