(usu in pl) a payment for work or services, esp of a manual kind, usu according to contract and on an hourly, daily, weekly, or piecework basis: compare salary1
(in pl) in economics, the share of the national product attributable to labour as a factor of production
(in pl, but treated as sing. or pl) recompense or reward
the wages of sin
The wages of sin is death — Bible
waged adj
wageless adj
[Middle English, in the senses ‘pledge’, ‘wage’, from Anglo-French and Old Northern French wage, of Germanic origin]