Wager

How to spell wager

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wager

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wager mean?

1. nounA sum of money or other stake risked on the outcome of an uncertain event.
2. verbTo risk a sum of money or other stake on the outcome of an uncertain event.

Wager in a sentence

• noun

  He placed a small wager on the final race of the afternoon.

• verb

  He would wager a month's salary that the train arrives late again.

• noun

  The two colleagues settled their wager over coffee once the result was confirmed.

• verb

  Few investors would wager their savings on such a volatile market.

Where does wager come from?

Language of origin: French

Wager came into English in the 1300s from Anglo-Norman French, where 'wageure' meant a pledge or a stake put down to guarantee something. That French word grew from the verb 'wagier', meaning 'to pledge' or 'to give as security', which itself rested on a Frankish Germanic root 'waddi' meaning a pledge or surety. The same Germanic root lies behind the everyday word 'wage' (originally money pledged as payment) and the older word 'gage', a glove thrown down as a challenge, so wager, wage, and engage all share a single ancestral idea of a binding promise. Over time the legal sense of a formal pledge narrowed into the gambling sense of money staked on an uncertain outcome. The 'w' followed by 'age' is the spelling trap, since the word sounds like it could begin with a softer letter, but its kinship with 'wage' is a reliable anchor.

How the word is built

• wage (a pledge, stake)
• -er (noun/agentive ending fossilised into the base form)