Wage
nounA fixed regular payment earned for work or services, usually paid by the hour, day, or week.
How to spell wage
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce wage
What does wage mean?
- nounA fixed regular payment earned for work or services, usually paid by the hour, day, or week.
- verbTo carry on or conduct a campaign, conflict, or sustained effort.
Wage in a sentence
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noun
The factory raised the minimum wage for every shift worker.
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verb
The two nations continued to wage war along the disputed border.
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noun
Her weekly wage barely covered the rent and groceries.
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verb
Campaigners vowed to wage a long battle against the new tax.
Where does wage come from?
Language of origin: French
Wage entered English in the early 1300s from Anglo-Norman and Old North French wage, a regional variant of the Old French gage, which meant a 'pledge' or 'security'. That word traces back to a Germanic root, wadi, meaning 'a pledge' or 'something deposited as a guarantee', the same ancestor that gave us 'gage' and the related 'engage' and 'wager'. The original idea was money or property promised, so the earliest English sense referred to a pledge or surety rather than to pay for labour. From a pledge of payment the meaning narrowed to the payment itself, the agreed reward for work done, which is the modern noun. The verb sense, as in to wage war, grew from the same notion of pledging or committing oneself to undertake something, and that shared origin explains why a single short spelling covers both 'a worker's pay' and 'to carry on a campaign'.
How the word is built
- wage (single root from Old North French wage 'pledge, pay'; no affixes)
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