Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Payment for labor or services to a worker, especially remuneration on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis or by the piece.
- n. Economics The portion of the national product that represents the aggregate paid for all contributing labor and services as distinguished from the portion retained by management or reinvested in capital goods.
- n. A fitting return; a recompense. Often used in the plural with a singular or plural verb: the wages of sin.
- v. To engage in (a war or campaign, for example).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A gage; a pledge; a stake.
- n. That which is paid for a service rendered; what is paid for labor; hire: now usually in the plural. Sometimes the plural form is used as a singular. In common use the word wages is applied specifically to the payment made for manual labor or other labor of a menial or mechanical kind: distinguished (but somewhat vaguely) from
salary (which see), and fromfee , which denotes compensation paid to professional men, as lawyers and physicians. - n. Synonyms Pay, Hire, etc. See salary.
- To pledge; bet; stake on a chance; lay; wager.
- To venture on; hazard; attempt; encounter.
- To engage in, as in a contest; carry on, as a war; undertake.
- To let out for pay.
- To hire for pay; engage or employ for wages.
- To pay wages to.
- In ceramics, to knead, work, or temper, as potters' clay.
- To contend; battle.
- To serve as a pledge or stake for something else; be opposed as equal stakes in a wager; be equal in value: followed by with.
Wiktionary
- n. an amount of money paid to a worker for a specified quantity of work, usually expressed on an hourly basis.
- v. To wager, bet.
- v. To employ for wages; to hire.
- v. To conduct or carry out (a war or other contest).
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To pledge; to hazard on the event of a contest; to stake; to bet, to lay; to wager.
- v. To expose one's self to, as a risk; to incur, as a danger; to venture; to hazard.
- v. To engage in, as a contest, as if by previous gage or pledge; to carry on, as a war.
- v. To adventure, or lay out, for hire or reward; to hire out.
- v. To put upon wages; to hire; to employ; to pay wages to.
- v. To give security for the performance of.
- v. To bind one's self; to engage.
- n. That which is staked or ventured; that for which one incurs risk or danger; prize; gage.
- n. That for which one labors; meed; reward; stipulated payment for service performed; hire; pay; compensation; -- at present generally used in the plural. See Wages.
WordNet 3.0
- v. carry on (wars, battles, or campaigns)
- n. something that remunerates
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Old North French, of Germanic origin.
Examples
“If the min wage is coercive, then all law is coercive.”
Coercion, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“Hence, I can't agree that the min wage is coercive.”
Coercion, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“Instead he takes the sane position: a large pool of cheap, foreign labor pushes down wages for US Citizens (who wants wage competition with a guy who thinks the min wage is a great salary?) and, in a post-9/11 world, how much sense does it make to have 12-20 million unidentified people walking around the country?”
“All future pay raises must be frozen until the min wage is raised to $7.25 an hour for all 50 states in America!”
“South into the unionized mills and you made a pass at organizing widely — you know, have what you call a wage increase drive, and you'd negotiate.”
“Increasing min wage is ALWAYS a good idea, since as wages go up, there’s more people willing to take those jobs, hence, decreased unemployment and a more competent work force.”
Think Progress » Ohio Right Wing Spreads Minimum Wage Jobs Myth
“(voice-over): At CASA Latina, volunteers say what they call wage theft from illegal immigrants is on the rise, partly because of the bad economy and partly because of discrimination.”
“Were the workmen to enter into a contrary combination of the same kind, not to accept of a certain wage under a certain penalty, the law would punish them very severely; and if it dealt impartially, it would treat the masters in the same manner.”
“And that means admitting minimum wage is too high.”
“That wage is about 50% higher than the median income, and when you add in the cost of the benefits it is tough for people to swallow.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘wage’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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Anglo-Norman
English words of Norman-French origin.
wage, wait, war, wicket, warranty, guarantee, guard, warden, guardian, glamour, grammar, catch and 30 more...
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Words That Can Be Typed Entirely With Just The ...
Words made of the following: qwertasdfgzxcvb. I've stood on the shoulders of giants... users mollusque and reesetee made similar lists before I even existed on Wordnik. :)
stewardesses, red tea, waves, axes, wrest, qat, waver, created, dressed, stress, crater, vexes and 49 more...

vanishedone WeirdNet is accurate enough, I suppose, but what an opaque way of putting it. Apr 6, 2009