Other forms: wages, waged, waging
A wage is the money you are paid for work, counted by the hour, the day or the week. The figure at the bottom of a payslip after a run of shifts — twelve pounds an hour, paid on Friday.
You will meet the plural far more than the singular: he spends his wages, wages have gone up again. Wage sits at the hourly end and salary at the yearly end, so a factory worker earns a wage while a manager draws a salary, and the fixed phrases follow — minimum wage, living wage, wage rise, wage packet. There is also a verb that looks like a stranger: you wage war, wage a campaign, wage a long battle with the council. That verb takes conflict and nothing else. You do not wage a party.
1nounwageMoney paid to a worker for the hours, days or weeks worked.~98%
“Her weekly wage barely covered the rent.”
synonyms: pay, earnings
2verbcarryTo carry on a war, campaign or long struggle.~2%
“The two families waged a feud over the land for thirty years.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 6 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
wage is a form of pay.
Also accepted in games: wages
Wage came through Middle English from Anglo-Norman wage, a northern cousin of Old French gauge, and back through Medieval Latin wadium to Frankish wadi, a pledge, from Proto-Germanic wadją. The Proto-Indo-European root behind it, wedʰ-, meant to pledge or redeem a pledge — the same root that gives wed. A wedding and a pay packet grow from one idea: a promise you are held to.
Proto-Indo-European
*wedʰ-
Middle English
wage
English, today
wage
From Middle English wage. From Middle English wage, from Anglo-Norman wage, from fro-nor wage, a northern variant of Old French gauge, guage (whence modern French gage), Medieval Latin wadium, from Frankish wadi (cognate with Old English wedd), from Proto-Germanic wadją (“pledge”), from Proto-Indo-European wedʰ- (“to pledge, redeem a pledge”). Akin to Old Norse veðja (“to pledge”), Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌳𐌹, Dutch wedde. Compare also the doublet gage. More at wed.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA