Deductible can be the amount you have to pay before your insurance kicks in, or it can mean an amount you can take off your taxes for various payments you have already made. Strange that one deductible can be so friendly and the other one so mean.
The Latin deducere, meaning "to derive," eventually became the word deduct, meaning "to take away." In the mid-19th Century, the word deductible was born, meaning something "may be deducted." As a noun, a deductible is something you pay, such as your insurance deductible. As an adjective, deductible describes something you can subtract from a total, usually from your taxes. Andy Warhol once said, “Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible.”
