 English vocabulary word of the day, toll, from espressoenglish.net. First let's work on the pronunciation. The O in toll sounds like in the words no, so, roll, and told. Say the word after me, toll. The word toll refers to a fee. It's an amount of money that you pay in order to drive on highways or bridges. The place where this money is collected is called a toll booth. In the picture on the left you can see an old picture of a toll booth when the toll was just ten cents. The picture on the right shows a modern toll area. Nowadays you can pay the toll in cash, credit card, or with a special electronic device that stays on your car. Another expression you might hear is the death toll. That's the number of people who died in an attack or disaster. For example, the death toll from the earthquake is currently above 2,000. That means more than 2,000 people died in this disaster. We have another expression, take a toll on something. This means to cause damage or have a bad effect. For example, years of smoking have taken a toll on my health. That means my many years of smoking have damaged my health. The economic crisis is taking a toll on developing countries. Again, taking a toll means it's having a bad effect on those countries. So now you'll recognize the word toll when you hear it in English. If you'd like to learn even more words, take my vocabulary builder course which will teach you hundreds of new vocabulary words. Click the links in the video to take some free sample lessons.