impost

A tax, tariff or duty that is imposed, especially on merchandise.

’Tis a Land-tax, vvhich he’s too poor to pay; / You, therefore muſt ſome other Impoſt lay.

1752, David Hume, Political Discourses, Edinburgh: A. Kincaid and A. Donaldson, “Of Taxes,” p. 120, […] a duty upon commodities checks itself; and a prince will soon find, that an encrease of the impost is no encrease of his revenue.

The weight that must be carried by a horse in a race; the handicap.

The top part of a column, pillar, pier, wall, etc. that supports an arch.

The outer circle [of Stonehenge] has been formed by a combination of two uprights and an impost; yet each combination of these three stones is detached, and without any connection with the rest, except that of coinciding in the form of a circle.