WAGES • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Wages

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/wˈeɪdʒəz/ /wˈeɪdʒɪz/ Listen

noun

Wages n.

1.

(plural in termination, but singular in signification) A compensation given to a hired person for services; price paid for labor; recompense; hire. See Wage, n., 2. "The wages of sin is death."

2.

(Economics) The share of the annual product or national dividend which goes as a reward to labor, as distinct from the remuneration received by capital in its various forms. This economic or technical sense of the word wages is broader than the current sense, and includes not only amounts actually paid to laborers, but the remuneration obtained by those who sell the products of their own work, and the wages of superintendence or management, which are earned by skill in directing the work of others.

Wages fund (Polit. Econ.), the aggregate capital existing at any time in any country, which theoretically is unconditionally destined to be paid out in wages. It was formerly held, by Mill and other political economists, that the average rate of wages in any country at any time depended upon the relation of the wages fund to the number of laborers. This theory has been greatly modified by the discovery of other conditions affecting wages, which it does not take into account.

Synonyms: See under Wage, n.

See images of 'Wages'

Etymology of 'Wages'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Wages" Quotes from Famous Books

... is death. Query? would the wages of sin are death be correct? This is an example of a disputed point of concord in respect to the number of ...

— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... home, late in the afternoon, through the sweet-smelling woods, that are beginning to hum with the voice of thousands of insects. My troop of volunteer workmen is increased to five; five lads working for my wages after they have done their task work; and this evening, to my no small amazement, Driver Bran came down to join them for an hour, after working all day at Five Pound, which certainly shows zeal ...

— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... Alabama. There have been many influences to retard immigration, the fear of fevers, malaria and typhoid, commonly associated with low countries, and the dread of overflows. Because of the lack of the labor force to develop the country planters have been led to offer higher wages, better houses, etc. There is about the farming district an air of prosperity which is not noticeable to the East. The country is particularly adapted to cotton, the yield is heavier, about a bale ...

— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey

... poems and personalities—born expressers of itself, its spirit alone, to radiate in subtle ways, not only in art, but the practical and familiar, in the transactions between employers and employed persons, in business and wages, and sternly in the army and navy, and revolutionizing them. I find nowhere a scope profound enough, and radical and objective enough, either for aggregates or individuals. The thought and identity of a poetry in America ...

— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... all!" exclaimed Valentine. "I thought you had made off with work and wages both! What did you ...

— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com