Etymology Dictionary

TAPER (1),  a small wax-candle.  (C.?)   M.E. taper, Rob. of Glouc., p. 456, l. 5.—A.S. tapor, taper, a taper; Wright, Voc. i. 81, col. 1; 284, col. 1.   Perhaps not E., but Celtic; cf. Irish tapar, a taper; W. tampr, a taper, torch.   In the latter case, we may compare it with Skt. tapas, fire, tap, to shine, to glow; and the orig. sense may have been 'glowing torch.'   See Tepid.

TAPER (2),  long and slender.  (C.?)   'Her taper fingers;' Dryden, tr. of Ovid, Metam. bk. i. l. 676.   Here the fingers are likened to tapers or small wax-candles; and the word is nothing but a substitution for taper-like.   This appears more clearly from the use of taper-wise, i.e. in the form of a taper, in Holland's tr. of Pliny, b. xvi. c. 16:  'the French box [box-tree]... groweth taper-wise, sharp pointed in the top, and runneth vp to more than ordinarie height.'   As wax tapers were sometimes made smaller towards the top, the word taper meant growing smaller towards the top, not truly cylindrical; whence the adj. tapering with the sense of taper-like, and finally the verb to taper.   We find A.S. tæper-ax, a tapering axe, A.S. Chron. an 1031; also 'tapering top' in Pitt, tr. of Virgil, Æn. bk. v. l. 489 of Lat. text.   Der. taper-ing, taper, vb. [†]

ADDENDA

TAPER (2).   The A.S. tæper-ax has nothing to do with mod. E. taper.   The Icel. tapar-öx, which is supposed by Vigfusson to have been borrowed from English, is really of Slavonic origin; cf. Russ. topor’, an axe.