gage

See also: Gage and gagé

English

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ɡeɪd͡ʒ/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • Rhymes: -eɪdʒ
  • Homophone: gauge

Etymology 1

From Middle English gage, from later Old French or early Middle French gager (verb), (also guagier in Old French) gage (noun), ultimately from Frankish *waddi, from Proto-Germanic *wadją (whence English wed). Doublet of wage, from the same origin through the Old Northern French variant wage. See also mortgage.

Verb

gage (third-person singular simple present gages, present participle gaging, simple past and past participle gaged) (transitive)

  1. To bind (someone) by pledge or security; to engage.
  2. (archaic) To bet or wager (something).
  3. (obsolete) To deposit or give (something) as a pledge or security; to pawn.

Noun

gage (plural gages)

  1. Something, such as a glove or other pledge, thrown down as a challenge to combat (now usually figurative).
    • 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC:
      “But it is enough that I challenge the trial by combat — there lies my gage.” She took her embroidered glove from her hand, and flung it down before the Grand Master with an air of mingled simplicity and dignity…
    • 1988, James McPherson, Battle Cry for Freedom, Oxford, published 2003, page 166:
      The gage was down for a duel that would split the Democratic party and ensure the election of a Republican president in 1860.
  2. (obsolete) Something valuable deposited as a guarantee or pledge; security, ransom.
    • 1886, Henry James, The Princess Casamassima, London: Macmillan and Co.:
      [I]t seemed to create a sort of material link between the Princess and himself, and at the end of three months it almost appeared to him, not that the exquisite book was an intended present from his own hand, but that it had been placed in that hand by the most remarkable woman in Europe.... [T]he superior piece of work he had done after seeing her last, in the immediate heat of his emotion, turned into a kind of proof and gage, as if a ghost, in vanishing from sight, had left a palpable relic.
Translations

Etymology 2

See gauge.

Noun

gage (plural gages)

  1. (US) Alternative spelling of gauge (“a measure, instrument for measuring, etc.”)

Verb

gage (third-person singular simple present gages, present participle gaging, simple past and past participle gaged)

  1. (US) Alternative spelling of gauge (“to measure”)
Usage notes

The spelling gage is encountered primarily in American English, but even there it is less common than the spelling gauge.

Translations
gauge — see gauge

Etymology 3

Back-formation from greengage.

Noun

gage (plural gages)

  1. A subspecies of plum, Prunus domestica subsp. italica.
Derived terms
Derived terms
Translations
Prunus domestica subsp. italica — see greengage

Noun

gage

  1. (slang, dated) Marijuana
    • 1951 December 20, William S. Burroughs, “To Allen Ginsberg”, in Oliver Harris, editor, The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945–1959, New York: Penguin, published 1993, →ISBN, page 98:
      Of course, I take a bang or some mud in coffee now and then, and I pick up on gage right smart.
    • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1st US edition, New York: Viking Press, →ISBN, part 1: Beyond the Zero, page 62:
      Black faces, white tablecloth, gleaming very sharp knives lined up by the saucers... tobacco and "gage" smoke richly blended, eye-reddening and tart as wine, yowzah gwine smoke a little ob dis hyah sheeit gib de wrinkles in mah brain a proccess!
  2. (archaic, UK, slang) A pint pot. [18th–19th c.c.]
  3. (archaic, UK, slang, metonymically) A drink. [from 19th c.]
  4. (archaic, UK, slang) A tobacco pipe. [mid 17th–early 19th c.]
  5. (archaic, UK, slang) A chamberpot. [19th c.]
  6. (archaic, UK, slang) A small quantity of anything. [19th c.]
    • 1864, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary, page 140:
      GAGE, a small quantity of anything; as “a gage of tobacco,” meaning a. pipeful; “a gage of gin,” a glassful.
  7. (obsolete, UK, thieves' cant) A quart pot. [15th–19th c.]
    • 1641–42, Richard Brome, A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars, act 2:
      I bowse no lage, but a whole gage / Of this I'll bowse to you.
    • 1747, Helen Berry, anonymous quotee, The Life and Character of Moll King, late mistress of King's Coffee House in Covent Garden‎, quoted in "Rethinking Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England", Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, published 2001, page 75, volume 11, series 6:
      Harry. To pay, Moll, for I must hike.
      Moll. Did you call me, Master?
      Harry. Ay, to pay, in a Whiff.
      Moll. Let me see. There's a Grunter's Gig, is a Si-Buxom; two Cat's Heads, a Win; a Double Gage of Rum Slobber, is Thrums; and a Quartern of Max, is three Megs: — That makes a Traveller all but a Meg.
      Harry. Here, take your Traveller, and tip the Meg to the Kinchin.

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from French gage.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˈɣaː.ʒə/
  • Audio(file)
  • Hyphenation: ga‧ge
  • Rhymes: -aːʒə

Noun

gage m (plural gages)

  1. wage for work performed (in particular for a performance by performing artists)

Descendants
  • → Malay: gaji

French

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ɡaʒ/
  • audio(file)
  • Rhymes: -aʒ
  • Homophones: gagent, gages

Etymology 1

Inherited from Middle French gage, from Old French gage, guage, from Early Medieval Latin wadius (attested in the Reichenau Glossary), from Frankish *waddī.

Noun

gage m (plural gages)

  1. pledge, guarantee
  2. (law, finance) deposit, security, guaranty (guarantee that debt will be paid; property relinquished to ensure this)
  3. forfeit (something deposited as part of a game)
  4. proof, evidence, assurance
  5. (in the plural) wages, salary
Derived terms
Descendants
  • → Dutch: gage
  • → German: Gage (see there for further descendants)

Verb

gage

  1. inflection of gager:
    1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
    2. second-person singular present imperative

Further reading

Middle English

Noun

gage (plural gages)

  1. Alternative form of cage

Noun

gage

  1. Alternative form of gauge

Etymology 3

From Old French gage, from Medieval Latin wadium, from Frankish *waddī. Doublet of wage and wed.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˈɡaːdʒ(ə)/

Noun

gage

  1. A security, surety, or bond.
  2. A formal declaration of combat.
  3. (rare) Money for the release of a hostage .
Descendants
References

Old French

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Frankish *waddī.

Noun

gage oblique singular, m (oblique plural gages, nominative singular gages, nominative plural gage)

  1. wage (regular remuneration)
  2. (figuratively) payment
    • c. 1176, Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès:
      « Garz, fet il, ça leiroiz le gage
      de mon seignor que tu as mort [»]
      "Boy" said he "this will be payback
      for my lord that you killed."

Descendants
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