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wager

nounverbnounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈweɪ.d͡ʒə(ɹ)//
  • Canada//ˈweɪ.d͡ʒɚ//
  • Australia//ˈwæɪ.d͡ʒə(ɹ)//

A bet; a stake; a pledge.

noun

  1. 1

    A bet; a stake; a pledge.

    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 manipulation. A prop bet is a wager on a specific occurrence during a game, rather than on the final result.

  2. 2

    The subject of a bet.

  3. 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.

    If any atheist can stake his soul for a wager against such an inexhaustible disproportion, let him never hereafter accuse others of credulity.

  4. 4

    An offer to make oath.

Etymology

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.

verb

  1. 1

    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.

  2. 2

    figurativeTo suppose; to dare say.

    I'll wager that Johnson knows something about all this.

noun

  1. 1

    Also a form of wageAgent noun of wage; one who wages.

    They were wagers of warfare against the wilderness and the Indians, and founders of families and towns.

    Hatshepsut was no wager of wars, no bloodstained conqueror.

Etymology

Etymology tree Middle English fro-norbor. ▲ Middle English wagebor. Middle English wage English wage Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere English -er English wager From wage (verb) + -er.

Forms

plural
wagers
past tense
wagered
past participle
wagered
present participle
wagering
third person singular
wagers
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).