Tithing

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A practice involving the allocation of a portion, often one-tenth, of personal income to support religious organizations or charitable efforts
2. The act of donating a specified fraction, regularly one-tenth, of financial earnings for religious or altruistic purposes
3. The giving of one tenth of one's income as a contribution to a religious body or charity

Etymology: Tithing has a second life that most people never notice: the same word once named a unit of English law. Before it meant a donation, a "tithing" was a group of ten households, each responsible for the good behaviour of its members, and it survives in historical records under that sense. The religious meaning came first, though, from Old English "tēoþung" and "tēoðung," formed from "tēoða," meaning a tenth, plus the suffix "-ung," which turned the action into a noun. The root is "tēoþian," to tithe, which means to take or give a tenth. Medieval English "tithynge" carried the same sense of setting aside one part in ten for the Church, and the modern noun keeps that core arithmetic. Its built-in meaning is therefore simply "tenth," and the word is a direct descendant of the Old English verb, not a later borrowing.

Synonyms: donation, offering