“A single root has sent out many branches which overshadow large fields of law. Gage, engagement, wage, wages, wager, wed, wedding, the Scottish wadset, all spring from one root. In particular we must notice that the word ‘gage,’ in Latin vadium, is applied indiscriminately to movables and immovables, to transactions in which a gage is given and to those in which a gage is taken. When a lord has seized his tenant’s goods in distress they are in his hands a gage for the payment of the rent that is in arrear, and the sheriff is always taking gages from those who have no mind to give them. The notion expressed by the word seems to be that expressed by our ‘security’ ….” 2 Frederick Pollock & Frederic W. Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I 117–18 (2d ed. 1899).
gage, vb. To pawn or pledge; to give as security for. • Gage is an older form of wage, and often appeared as a phrase, gager deliverance. Cf. WAGE(2).
“Though the word Gage be retained, as it is a Substantive, yet as it is a verb, use hath turned the Gage into Wage so as it is oftener written Wage; as to Wage Deliverance, to give security, that a thing shall be delivered: For, if he that distrained, being sued, have not delivered the Cattle that were distrained, then he shall not onely avow the Distress, but Gager Deliverance, put in surety, that he will deliver them.” Thomas Blount, Nomo-Lexicon: A Law-Dictionary (1670).
