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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

wage.

An amount of money paid to a worker for a specified quantity of work, usually calculated on an hourly basis and expressed in an amount of money per hour.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/weɪd͡ʒ/
  1. An amount of money paid to a worker for a specified quantity of work, usually calculated on an hourly basis and expressed in an amount of money per hour.

    often · plural
    Before her promotion, her wages were 20% less.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English wage, from Anglo-Norman wage, from Old Northern French wage, a northern variant of Old French gauge, guage (whence modern French gage), Medieval Latin wadium, from Frankish *waddī (cognate with Old English wedd), from Proto-Germanic *wadją (“pledge”), from Proto-Indo-European *wedʰ- (“to pledge, redeem a pledge”). Akin to Old Norse veðja (“to pledge”), Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌳𐌹 (wadi), Dutch wedde. Compare also the doublet gage. More at wed.

verb/weɪd͡ʒ/
  1. To wager, bet.

    obsolete · transitive
  2. To expose oneself to, as a risk; to incur, as a danger; to venture; to hazard.

    obsolete · transitive
  3. To employ for wages; to hire.

    obsolete · transitive
  4. To conduct or carry out (a war or other contest).

    transitive
  5. To adventure, or lay out, for hire or reward; to hire out.

    transitive
  6. To give security for the performance of.

    UK · obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English wagen (“to pledge”), from Anglo-Norman, Old Northern French wagier, a northern variant of Old French guagier (whence modern French gager), itself either from guage or from a derivative of Frankish *waddī, possibly through a Vulgar Latin intermediate *wadiō from *wadium (see the noun above). See Medieval Latin wadiō and wadium for more.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.