Stamp Act
- proper noun
- /stæmp ækt/
- Then Parliament imposed a variety of taxes on the colonies, including the infamous Stamp Act.
- Stamp Act of 1765
- repeal of the Stamp Act
Examples
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At the time, tensions were high over the recently enacted Stamp Act, which levied taxes on legal documents, newspapers, and magazines.
Blog text (11) -
And that brings us to the real topic of today's lecture, which is the Stamp Act crisis.
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Following the Stamp Act, he wrote a letter of opposition to the tax.
Academic text (1991) -
The Stamp Act was a direct tax imposed on the colonies by King George III.
Blog text (5) -
When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, Americans had never before experienced direct taxation.
Blog text (16) -
In 1766, the recently passed Stamp Act, which levied a direct tax upon colonial newspapers and legal documents, sparked a great hue and cry.
Academic text (2010) -
After the passage of the Stamp Act of 1765, printers found themselves in a much-changed environment, Botein claims, and found that impartiality reduced their popularity.
Academic text (1991) -
The so-called Stamp Act required that these materials, from attorneys' licenses to pamphlets, be produced on official stamped paper, which was much more expensive than untaxed paper.
Academic text (2011) -
Zubly certainly decried the Stamp Act and denounced it as "an unhappy, ill-advised act of the British legislature," but "oppression and rebellion are both wicked," he wrote.
Academic text (2010) -
The passing of the Stamp Act in 1765 sparked protests across the American colonies.
Synonyms
A payment you make by buying an official stamp and putting it on certain documents
A tax you pay on certain legal papers, for example when buying a house
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound literally combines 'stamp' (a mark or tax-related impression) with 'act' (a law), so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes a law concerning stamps. However, the full historical sense—an 18th-century British tax law on colonial documents and newspapers—is specific and not predictable from the constituents alone, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Stamp Act was a British law that made people in the American colonies buy an official stamp to put on newspapers and legal papers as proof they had paid a 'tax'. That clear image—a paper with a stamp showing payment—explains the name and why people protested until the law was removed.