Word.ws English Dictionary

wager

UK/ˈweɪ.d͡ʒə(ɹ)//ˈweɪ.d͡ʒɚ/

wager noun: a bet; a stake; a pledge. Also the agent noun of wage.

Noun

wager (plural wagers)

  1. A bet; a stake; a pledge.
    • “This thicket was a singular, an exceedingly singular one. It was unusually dense. Within its naturally walled enclosure were three extraordinary stones, forming a seat with a back and footstool.… , whose boys were in the habit of closely examining the shrubberies about them in search of the bark...1842-43, Edgar Allan Poe, "The Mystery of Marie Roget"
    • They have hired high-tech security companies to monitor wagers at a granular level and implemented sophisticated algorithmic systems to spot unusual gambling activity, ensuring that no athlete would be foolish enough to wager on a game. […] And prop bets have proved particularly ripe for...2025 October 24, Keith O’Brien, “Sports Can’t Survive Prop Bets”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 24 Oct 2025
  2. The subject of a bet.
  3. A contract by which two parties or more agree that a certain sum of money, or other thing, shall be paid or delivered to one of them, on the happening or not happening of an uncertain event.
    • Besides these Plates, the Wagers may be as the Persons please among themselves, but the Horses must be evidenced by good Testimonies to have been bred in Ireland.1673, Sir William Temple, Advancement of Trade in Ireland
    • If any atheist can stake his soul for a wager against such an inexhaustible disproportion, let him never hereafter accuse others of credulity.1692, Richard Bentley, [A Confutation of Atheism] (please specify the sermon), London: [Thomas Parkhurst; Henry Mortlock], published 1692–1693
  4. An offer to make oath.

Verb

wager (third-person singular simple present wagers, present participle wagering, simple past and past participle wagered)

  1. (transitive) To bet something; to put it up as collateral.
    • I'd wager my boots on it.
    • They have hired high-tech security companies to monitor wagers at a granular level and implemented sophisticated algorithmic systems to spot unusual gambling activity, ensuring that no athlete would be foolish enough to wager on a game.2025 October 24, Keith O’Brien, “Sports Can’t Survive Prop Bets”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 24 Oct 2025
  2. (figuratively, intransitive) To suppose; to dare say.
    • I'll wager that Johnson knows something about all this.
    Synonyms:
    lay odds

Proper noun capitalized: Wager

Wager (plural Wagers)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

wager is also the agent noun of wage.

wager meaning in Marathi and Tagalog

wager in Marathi

the subject of a bet
जुगार jugār, पैज paij
to bet on something
पैज लावणे paij lāvṇe, पैज मारणे paij mārṇe

wager in Tagalog

a stake; a pledge
taya

Examples of wager in a sentence

  • If I were a betting man, I'd wager my next pay check he couldn't do that again.
  • Some gamblers make wagers all day long.
  • The Spartans were wagers of war.

All 24 example sentences with wager

Synonyms of wager

Forms of wager

Noun
pluralwagers
Verb
third-person singular presentwagers
present participlewagering
past participlewagered
pastwagered
Proper noun
pluralWagers

Plural of wager: wagers

Origin of wager

From Middle English wajour, wageour, wager, from Old Northern French wageure, from wagier (“to pledge”) (compare Old French guagier, whence modern French gager and contemporary Walloon wadjî), ultimately from Frankish *waddjōn (“to pledge”), from Frankish *wadi ~ *waddī (“pledge”). See also wage.

From wage (verb) + -er.

Words formed from wager

Words that rhyme with wager

Questions about wager

What does wager mean?
Wager means a bet; a stake; a pledge.
What is wager in Marathi?
Wager in Marathi is जुगार (jugār), पैज (paij), पैज लावणे (paij lāvṇe). See Wager meaning in Marathi.
What part of speech is wager?
Wager can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce wager?
Wager is pronounced /ˈweɪ.d͡ʒə(ɹ)/ (UK).
What is the plural of wager?
The plural of wager is wagers.

Words near wager in the dictionary

  1. Wageners
  2. Wagenhausen
  3. Wageningen
  4. Wagenknecht
  5. Wagenknechts
  6. wager
  7. wager a dollar to a donut
  8. wager a dollar to a doughnut
  9. wager of battel
  10. wager of battle
  11. wager of law

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wager (page history and authors); Wager (page history and authors). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-wager.ogg.

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