Word.ws English Dictionary

gage

/ɡeɪd͡ʒ/

gage verb: to bind (someone) by pledge or security; to engage. Also the alternative spelling of gauge.

Verb

gage (third-person singular simple present gages, present participle gaging, simple past and past participle gaged)

  1. (transitive) To bind (someone) by pledge or security; to engage.
    • Great debts / Wherein my time, sometimes too prodigal, / Hath left me gaged.c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  2. (archaic, transitive) To bet or wager (something).
    • O doe not goe, this feaſt (I'le gage my life) / Is but a plot to trayne you to your ruine, / Be rul'd, you ſha'not goe.c. 1626 or 1629–1633 (first performance), [John Ford], ’Tis Pitty Shee’s a Whore […], London: […] Nicholas Okes for Richard Collins, […], published 1633, →OCLC, Act V, signature I2, verso
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To deposit or give (something) as a pledge or security; to pawn.
    • A moiety competent / Was gaged by our king.c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...

Noun (1)

gage (plural gages)

  1. (transitive) Something, such as a glove or other pledge, thrown down as a challenge to combat (now usually figurative).
    • “But it is enough that I challenge the trial by combat — there lies my gage.” She took her embroidered glove from her hand, and flung it down before the Grand Master with an air of mingled simplicity and dignity…1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co....
    • "I'm nothing of the sort," exclaimed the MacQuibble, hurling down the gage of battle at once.1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932
  2. (obsolete, transitive) Something valuable deposited as a guarantee or pledge; security, ransom.
    • [I]t seemed to create a sort of material link between the Princess and himself, and at the end of three months it almost appeared to him, not that the exquisite book was an intended present from his own hand, but that it had been placed in that hand by the most remarkable woman in Europe.... [T]he...1886, Henry James, The Princess Casamassima, London: Macmillan and Co.

Noun (2)

gage (plural gages)

  1. (transitive) A subspecies of plum, Prunus domestica subsp. italica.

Noun (3)

gage (countable and uncountable, plural gages)

  1. (dated, slang, transitive, uncountable) Marijuana
    • Of course, I take a bang or some mud in coffee now and then, and I pick up on gage right smart.1951 December 20, William S. Burroughs, “To Allen Ginsberg”, in Oliver Harris, editor, The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945–1959, New York: Penguin, published 1993, →ISBN, page 98
    • Black faces, white tablecloth, gleaming very sharp knives lined up by the saucers... tobacco and "gage" smoke richly blended, eye-reddening and tart as wine, yowzah gwine smoke a little ob dis hyah sheeit gib de wrinkles in mah brain a proccess!1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1st US edition, New York: Viking Press, →ISBN, part 1: Beyond the Zero, page 62
  2. (UK, archaic, slang, transitive) A pint pot.
  3. (UK, archaic, metonymically, slang, transitive) A drink.
  4. (UK, archaic, slang, transitive) A tobacco pipe.
    • Troll us a stave, my antediluvian file, and in the mean time tip me a gage of fogus, Jerry1834, William Harrison Ainsworth, Rookwood, volume 2, page 353
  5. (UK, archaic, slang, transitive) A chamber pot.
  6. (UK, archaic, slang, transitive) A small quantity of anything.
    • GAGE, a small quantity of anything; as “a gage of tobacco,” meaning a. pipeful; “a gage of gin,” a glassful.1864, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary, page 140
  7. (UK, obsolete, transitive, thieves' cant) A quart pot.
    • I bowse no lage, but a whole gage / Of this I'll bowse to you.1641–42, Richard Brome, A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars, act 2
    • Harry. To pay, Moll, for I must hike.
      Moll. Did you call me, Master?
      Harry. Ay, to pay, in a Whiff.
      Moll. Let me see. There's a Grunter's Gig, is a Si-Buxom; two Cat's Heads, a Win; a Double Gage of Rum Slobber, is Thrums; and a Quartern of Max, is three Megs: — That makes a Traveller all but a...1747, Helen Berry, anonymous quotee, The Life and Character of Moll King, late mistress of King's Coffee House in Covent Garden, quoted in "Rethinking Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England"...

Proper noun capitalized: Gage

Gage (countable and uncountable, plural Gages)

  1. A surname originating as an occupation.
  2. A male given name transferred from the surname, of modern usage.
  3. A female given name.
  4. An unincorporated community in Ballard County, Kentucky.
  5. A ghost town in Luna County, New Mexico.
  6. A town in Ellis County, Oklahoma, named after Lyman J. Gage.
  7. An unincorporated community in Barbour County, West Virginia.

Noun (4) capitalized: GAGE

GAGE (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Georgetown Alliance of Graduate Employees.

Also used as

gage is also the alternative spelling of gauge.

gage meaning in Malayalam

gage in Malayalam

ഗെയ്ജ് ചെയ്യാൻ, ഗെയ്ജ് ചെയ്യാനായി

Examples of gage in a sentence

  • Gage had gone foetal: knees raised, chin ducked , arms shielding his head.
  • Gage of New York, who in the late nineteenth century both experienced and articulated this phenomenon.
  • Castings that break outside of the gage marks shall not be repulled.

All 11 example sentences with gage

Forms of gage

Verb
third-person singular presentgages
present participlegaging
past participlegaged
pastgaged
Noun
pluralgages
Proper noun
pluralGages

Past tense of gage: gaged

Origin of gage

From Middle English gage, from later Old French or early Middle French gager (verb), (also guagier in Old French) gage (noun), ultimately from Frankish *waddi, from Proto-Germanic *wadją (whence English wed). Doublet of wage, from the same origin through the Old Northern French variant wage. See also mortgage.

See gauge.

Back-formation from greengage.

Words formed from gage

Phrases with gage

Words that rhyme with gage

27 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about gage

What does gage mean?
Gage means to bind (someone) by pledge or security; to engage.
What is gage in Malayalam?
Gage in Malayalam is ഗെയ്ജ് ചെയ്യാൻ, ഗെയ്ജ് ചെയ്യാനായി. See Gage meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is gage?
Gage can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce gage?
Gage is pronounced /ɡeɪd͡ʒ/.
What is the past tense of gage?
The past tense of gage is gaged.

Words near gage in the dictionary

  1. Gagauz
  2. Gagauzes
  3. Gagauzia
  4. Gagauzian
  5. Gagauzians
  6. gage
  7. Gage County
  8. gage pressure
  9. gage pressures
  10. Gagebrook
  11. gaged

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gage (page history and authors); Gage (page history and authors); GAGE (page history and authors); gage (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-gage.wav.

Cite this entry: “gage.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gage. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.