Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To determine the value, significance, or extent of; appraise. synonym: estimate.
  • transitive verb To estimate the value of (property) for taxation.
  • transitive verb To set or determine the amount of (a payment, such as a tax or fine).
  • transitive verb To charge (a person or property) with a special payment, such as a tax or fine.
  • transitive verb Sports To charge (a player, coach, or team) with a foul or penalty.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To set, fix, or charge a certain sum upon, by way of tax: as, to assess each individual in due proportion.
  • To estimate the value or amount of (property or income) as a basis for taxation.—3. To set, fix, or determine: as, it is the province of a jury to assess damages.
  • noun Assessment.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To value; to make a valuation or official estimate of for the purpose of taxation.
  • transitive verb To apportion a sum to be paid by (a person, a community, or an estate), in the nature of a tax, fine, etc.; to impose a tax upon (a person, an estate, or an income) according to a rate or apportionment.
  • transitive verb To determine and impose a tax or fine upon (a person, community, estate, or income); to tax.
  • transitive verb To fix or determine the rate or amount of.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To determine, estimate or judge the value of; to evaluate
  • verb transitive To impose or charge, especially as punishment for an infraction.
  • verb transitive To calculate and demand (the tax money due) from a person or entity.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb evaluate or estimate the nature, quality, ability, extent, or significance of
  • verb charge (a person or a property) with a payment, such as a tax or a fine
  • verb estimate the value of (property) for taxation
  • verb set or determine the amount of (a payment such as a fine)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English assessen, from Old French assesser, from Latin assidēre, assess-, to sit by as an assistant judge : ad-, ad- + sedēre, to sit; see sed- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French assesser, from Medieval Latin assessare, originally the frequentative of Latin assessus, past participle of assidere.

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Examples

  • What we have got to assess is the value of the deal against the dislocation or whatever of any potential comments from the regulators.

    Rio Tinto: Iron Ore Venture with BHP Still 'Live Issue' David Fickling 2010

  • The second thing they must guess/assess is their faith in you to do accomplish something of a similar magnitude to the comps, generally expressed as a percentage. posted by redbarren at 6: 27 PM

    Investing in Badly Dressed People. Ben Barren 2006

  • The second thing they must guess/assess is their faith in you to do accomplish something of a similar magnitude to the comps, generally expressed as a percentage. posted by redbarren at 6: 27 PM

    Archive 2006-08-01 Ben Barren 2006

  • "The first thing you have to assess is why did you lose," he said.

    USATODAY.com - Federer too much for Agassi en route to U.S. Open title 2005

  • But the first thing you have to assess is why did you lose.

    USATODAY.com - Agassi's spectacular run comes to an end 2005

  • The most difficult risk to assess is the political uncertainty, which would, of course, be aggravated by any or all of the other uncertainties.

    Trade with China 1978

  • - Related to the first question, to what degree does the rubric assess for specific skills and knowledge that are needed by students as they progress from this course to others?

    Wired Campus 2010

  • In test process management, it is important to plemented into the project is efficient, effective in terms assess the effectiveness of different testing techniques, in of factors such as cost, time, and the number of bugs that terms of their ability to expose errors and also the size of can be detected.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows Softwarecentral 2010

  • Issuing the security advisory is Step 3, called assess and stabilize, where "the engineering team investigates and develops the solution, while the communications team reaches out to provide guidance to customers and partners."

    ARN News 2009

  • Then assess, which is "best". so, do you know any software can convert to a good MPEG2 file, the best converter

    VideoHelp.com Forum 2008

Comments

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  • In the UN, a peculiar usage of the word "assess" is emerging. One source is a General Comment by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which refers to "process of child impact assessment (predicting the impact of any proposed law, policy or budgetary allocation which affects children and the enjoyment of their rights) and child impact evaluation (evaluating the actual impact of implementation)." (General Comment No.5, para.45) It seems to me a misuse, because I don't believe that the work "assess" should be used to refer to something that doesn't exist, because it is in the future. Comments?

    July 21, 2010

  • Impact assessment seems a perfectly normal kind of assessing. You can also study, evaluate, judge, or prepare for something that will came about in the future.

    July 21, 2010