Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

wager

UK/ˈweɪ.d͡ʒə(ɹ)/US/ˈweɪ.d͡ʒɚ/
verbB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,188 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: wagering, wagers, wagered

To wager is to bet money on the result of something. Wager a pound, wager on the outcome, the wager stands.

It is the formal word beside bet and it survives in law and in old phrases. Pascal's wager is the argument that believing in God is the safer bet whatever the odds. The word shares a root with wage, from a pledge given as security.

Definitions of wager

  1. 1verbwagerTo bet money on the result of something.B2

    “He wagered fifty dollars that his horse would win.”

wager is a bet.

Where it comes from

Old Northern French wageure comes from wagier, to pledge, from a Germanic root. Wage and gauge are relatives.

  1. Frankish

    *waddjōn — to pledge

  2. fro-nor

    wageure

  3. Middle English

    wajour

  4. English, today

    wager

Built from

  • wagier · Old French — to pledge

From Middle English wajour, wageour, wager, from fro-nor wageure, from wagier (“to pledge”) (compare Old French guagier, whence modern French gager and contemporary wa wadjî), ultimately from Frankish waddjōn (“to pledge”), from Frankish wadi (“pledge”). See also wage.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

wager in the wild

  • Gambling thus requires three elements to be present: consideration (an amount wagered), risk (chance), and a prize.

    Gambling

  • However in many situations, the possible loss ("stake" or "wager") is paid up front and, if the gambler wins, the net win plus the stake is returned.

    Odds

  • When Moneyline odds are quoted as a positive number +X, it means that a wager pays X to 100.

    Odds

  • Critics of Pascal's wager question the ability to provide definitive proof of God's existence.

    Pascal's wager

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.