gages

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....
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
2. (UK, archaic, slang, transitive) A pint pot.
3. (UK, archaic, metonymically, slang, transitive) A drink.

See all 20 meanings of gage