gage

• IPA^(key): /ɡeɪd͡ʒ/
• Rhymes: -eɪdʒ
• Homophone: gauge

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 Germanic (whence English wed). Doublet of wage, from the same origin through the Old Northern French variant wage. See also mortgage.

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

1. (obsolete) To give or deposit as a pledge or security; to pawn.
   • Shakespeare

     A moiety competent / Was gaged by our king.

2. (archaic) To wager, to bet.
   • Ford

     This feast, I'll gage my life, / Is but a plot to train you to your ruin.

3. To bind by pledge, or security; to engage.
   • Shakespeare

     Great debts / Wherein my time, sometimes too prodigal, / Hath left me gaged.

gage (plural gages)

1. Something, such as a glove or other pledge, thrown down as a challenge to combat (now usually figurative).
   • 1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe:

     “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 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.

     [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.

See gauge.

gage (plural gages)

1. US alternative spelling of gauge (a measure, instrument for measuring, etc.)

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

1. (US) Alternative spelling of gauge (to measure)

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

Named after the Gage family of England, who imported the greengage from France.

gage (plural gages)

1. A subspecies of plum, Prunus domestica subsp. italica.

gage

1. (obsolete, Britain, thieves' cant) A quart pot. [15th–19th c.]
   • 1641–42, Brome, Richard, 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, Berry, Helen, quoting Anonymous, 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.

2. (archaic, Britain, slang) A pint pot. [18th–19th c.c.]
3. (archaic, Britain, slang, metonymically) A drink. [from 19th c.]
4. (archaic, Britain, slang) A tobacco pipe. [mid 17th–early 19th c.]
   • 1834, Ainsworth, William Harrison, Rookwood, volume 2, page 353:

     Troll us a stave, my antediluvian file, and in the mean time tip me a gage of fogus, Jerry;

5. (archaic, Britain, slang) A chamberpot. [19th c.]
6. (archaic, Britain, slang) A small quantity of anything. [19th c.]
   • 1864, Hotten, John Camden, 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. (slang, dated) Marijuana
   • 1973, Pynchon, Thomas, Gravity's Rainbow:

     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!

From Middle French gage, from Old French gage, guage, from Frankish *waddī.

• IPA^(key): /ɡaʒ/

• audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʒ
• Homophones: gagent, gages

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. (plural) wages, salary

• tueur à gages

• gager

gage

1. first-person singular present indicative of gager
2. third-person singular present indicative of gager
3. first-person singular present subjunctive of gager
4. third-person singular present subjunctive of gager
5. second-person singular present imperative of gager

• “gage” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

From Old French cage.

gage (plural gages)

1. Alternative form of cage

From Old Northern French gauge.

gage

1. Alternative form of gauge

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡaːdʒ(ə)/

gage

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

• English: gage

• “gāǧe (n.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-04-22.

• guage, gaige, wage

From Medieval Latin wadium (“pledge, legal contract, wage”), from Frankish *waddī.

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

1. wage (regular remuneration)
2. (figuratively) payment
   • circa 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."

• Middle French: gage
  • French: gage
• → Middle English: gage
  • English: gage