See Also: wage(medicine)
wage(1)(dictionary)
wage(2)(dictionary)
Wage(money)
wage 1, noun(dictionary)
Minimum wage(finance)
Wage assignment(finance)
Wage or wages(finance)
wage-packet(dictionary)
wage-earner(dictionary)

wage(1) (iou)



wage noun. ME.
[Anglo-Norman, Old Northern French (Anglo-Latin vagium, wagium) = Old French guage, (also mod.) gage, from Germanic, rel. to GAGE noun1, WED noun.]
= GAGE noun1 1, 2. ME-L16.
sing. & in pl. A payment made, usu. by an employer to an employee, in return for work or service rendered; formerly esp. a salary or fee paid to a person of official or professional status. Now spec. a fixed regular payment, usu. daily or weekly, by an employer to an unskilled or manual worker (cf. SALARY noun 1). ME.
living wage: see LIVING noun1. social wage: see SOCIAL adjective.
B. Bainbridge He had three weeks' wages saved. P. Fitzgerald She had been hired..for an agreed weekly wage. She Women..still earn only two-thirds of male wages.
b. spec. (Usu. in pl.) A soldier's pay. ME-M17.
c. In pl. (Economics.) The part of total production that is the return to labour as earned income as distinct from the remuneration received by capital as unearned income. M20.
sing. & in pl. Reward, recompense, requital. ME.
Scientific American Heart attacks..thought of as..the wages of overeating. Guardian That..thriller about the wages of sin, Fatal Attraction.
A payment for the use or possession of property. rare. LME-E17.
Comb.: wage-claim a demand for an increase in wages, esp. by a trade union; wage drift the tendency for wages to rise above national rates through local overtime and other agreements; the extent of this increase; wage-earner a person who works for wages; wage economy a system of economic organization in which employees are paid wages in return for work (cf. share economy s.v. SHARE noun2); wage freeze a temporary fixing of wages at a certain level; wage scale a graduated scale of wage rates for different levels of work; wages council any of various statutory bodies consisting of management and employee representatives responsible for determining minimum rates of pay in particular industries, esp. those in which collective bargaining is comparatively weak; wage slave a person dependent on income from employment of an extremely arduous or menial nature; wage slavery the condition of being a wage slave; wage stop the limitation of supplementary benefit to the level of the average wage.
wagedom noun (rare) the economic system under which wage-earners live L19.
wageless adjective (a) rare that does not pay a wage; (b) unpaid; not earning or receiving wages: E17.
wagelessness noun E20.