Other forms: gages
A gage is a pledge, or a glove thrown down as a challenge. Throw down the gage, take up the gage, a gage of honour.
It is archaic and belongs to chivalric romance, where throwing down a gage was the formal act of challenging somebody to combat. The word survives in engage, which means to bind by pledge, and in mortgage, a dead pledge. Note that gage is also an American spelling of gauge, meaning a measuring instrument, which is a different word entirely and far commoner.
1noungageA pledge, or a glove thrown down as a challenge.
“The knight threw down his gage before the king to challenge his rival.”
gage is a pledge or challenge.
GAGE → the PAGE thrown down
He tore a page out of the book, threw it down on the table between them, and said that was his promise to fight.
hooks ontopage
Frankish wadi meant a pledge, from a Germanic root that also gives wed — a wedding is a pledging. Gage, wage, wed and engage are all the same word by different routes.
Proto-Indo-European
*wedʰ-
Proto-Germanic
*wadją
Frankish
*wadi
Middle French
gager
Middle English
gage
English, today
gage
From Middle English gage, from later Old French - or early Middle French gager, (also guagier in Old French) gage, ultimately from Frankish wadi, from Proto-Germanic wadją (whence wed). a doublet of wage, from the same origin through the Old Northern French variant wage. See also mortgage.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA