Definition of "cess"

Cess is none other than that which you yourself called imposition [...]

1596, Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Irelande‎

The act provides for a levy of a cess on all coal and coke despatched from collieries in India, at such rate, not less than twenty-five paise and not more than fifty paise per ton, as may be fixed by the Central Government.

1967, G. R. Madan, Indian Social Problems, volume 2, page 225

Therefore it was proposed to levy a cess on local authorities which are entrusted with the duty of supplying water under the law by or under which they are constituted and on certain specified industries.

2006, The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, Georg Thieme Verlag, page 76

"Bad cess may attend you, where are you scampering to, you rambunctious"—but she could go no farther; the tears burst from her, and she gave way, without farther resistance, to an explosion of grief.

1852 November, O’Hara Family, “Clough Fionn; or, The Stone of Destiny”, in The Dublin University Magazine, a Literary and Political Journal, volume XL, number CCXXXIX, Dublin: James McGlashan, […]; London: W[illia]m S[omerville] Orr and Company, chapter XI, page 557

Midland has had good cess with using minute commercials eight television stations, cited as one example of modernizing its advertising.

1962, News for Farmer Cooperatives‎, Information Office, Farm Credit Administration

It is good cess to feel the warmth and sincerity of this couple who fill the role of the Queen's representative in Canada.

1965, Canada Month‎

Bad cess to it, b'ys! Where's the blessed ting, at all, at all? Bad cess to it!

2004, Kevin O'Malley, Inside, page 37

The poor jade is wrung in the withers out of all cess.

c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene i]

...according to the quantity thereof, we may cess the said rent and allowance issuing thereout.

1596, Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Irelande‎

In April 1923, he was working with a gang of five others in Glasgow on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS). They were told to walk in the cess. But as it wasn't clear, they walked on the sleepers, each carrying a 70lb lifting screw on his shoulder. McGuinness was struck by a train and killed for want of a safe path.

2022 August 10, Dr Mike Esbester, “New understandings from old incidents”, in RAIL, number 963, page 58

And therefore, if there be lord, mesne, and tenant, and the tenant doth cess, and the mesne takes a wife and dies, his wife shall not have dower of the tenancy...

1827, John Perkins, A Profitable Book, Treating of the Laws of England‎