From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishwagewage1 /weɪdʒ/ ●●● S2 W2 noun 1 [singular] (also wages [plural])BEW money you earn that is paid according to the number of hours, days, or weeks that you work → salary He earns a good wage.wage increase (also wage rise British English) The wage increases will come into effect in June.daily/weekly etc wage a weekly wage of $250wage levels/rates (=fixed amounts of money paid for particular jobs)2 → a living wage3 → wage freeze4 → wage claimCOLLOCATIONSadjectiveshighThe factory workers are demanding higher wages.lowThere are high numbers of people on low wages.goodThey were earning good wages.Wages are good compared to other occupations.a decent wage (=one that is reasonable and allows you to buy what you need)Jobs in the factories used to pay a decent wage, but those jobs are gone now.the hourly/daily/monthly etc wageThe average daily wage was £100.the minimum wage (=the lowest amount of money that an employer can legally pay to a worker)a rise in the minimum wagethe basic wage (=what someone earns before overtime pay, tips, or bonuses are added)The basic wage paid at the factory is the lowest in the auto industry, but with bonuses, the total compensation is the highest.real wages (=a calculation of how much your wages will buy, usually compared to how much you were able to buy in the past)Average real wages rose by 26% between 1919 and 1929.wage + NOUNa wage increase/riseThe rail workers demanded a 20% wage increase.a wage reduction/cutThose who kept their jobs had to take large wage cuts.wage levels/ratesWage levels remained low during the 1930s.verbsearn a wageBoth parents were earning a wage, yet money was still tight.pay a wageSome firms still paid lower wages to female workers.raise wagesHe was able to raise the wages of some key staff.
Examples from the Corpus
wage• As capital moves to low-wage areas, the employment rate tends to rise, and wages are pushed up.• Steve makes a decent wage as a civil engineer.• Without qualifications it's nearly impossible to get a job with decent wages.• In general, computer jobs pay good wages.• Being of very modest means, but having some contacts upon the turf, he attempted to increase his wages by gambling.• Elvina earns an hourly wage of $11.• Most of the new jobs in the area only pay the minimum wage.• The Trotskyist movement has long advocated a sliding scale of wages to meet the rising cost of living.• About 35p of this went on wages.• The behaviour of both productivity and product wages do not conform precisely to the simplest description of overaccumulation.• There was, in the mid century, a gap between rising wages and even more rapidly rising prices that favoured investment.• Farmers are businessmen and since wages constitute a cost of production they will normally pay no more than prevailing conditions dictate.wage levels/rates• Whether leisure time increases or decreases as wage rates rise is an empirical question.• Controlling for the other variables, Thaler and Rosen found a clear systematic tendency for wage rates to rise with increasing risk.• The effect of wage rates is a result of two conflicting elements.• Resultant wage levels eroded corporate liquidity and profitability, although the extent of the deterioration varied between nations.• It is for these reasons that wage rates differ from one job to the next.• In Fig. 11-7 the wage rates for labour in the two localities are shown on the vertical axis.• It is the demand and supply conditions in these segmented markets which help to determine the wage rates of different workers.• He set the wage levels, the production targets, the safety standards, and he really planned the whole industry.wagewage2 verb [transitive] FIGHT FOR OR AGAINST somethingto be involved in a war against someone, or a fight against somethingwage war (on somebody/something) The police are waging war on drug pushers in the city.wage a campaign/struggle/battle etc The council has waged a vigorous campaign against the proposal.→ See Verb tableExamples from the Corpus
wage• But the anguished upstate New York social worker now finds himself waging a spirited campaign to keep his sibling from death row.• Bernard would lie awake for hours waging his nightly battle with carnality, slapping it down, groaning.• And war must be waged on organized crime.• So he theorized that, for democracies, waging war had a hyperbolic boomerang-like effect on society.wage a campaign/struggle/battle etc• They have waged a campaign against Town.• They waged a battle, and we waged a skirmish, and they won.• Pasok denied yesterday it was waging a battle on two fronts.From Longman Business Dictionarywagewage /weɪdʒ/ noun [countable] (also wages)HUMAN RESOURCES money that someone earns according to the number of hours, days, or weeks that they work, especially money that is paid each weekThe average hourly wage in the industry is $8.Workers were demanding a 10% wage increase.The new law would mean a 5% pay cut for most wage earners.For the average worker, wages rose 4.6%.She worked long hours for low wages. → basic wage → living wage → minimum wage → money wages → real wagesOrigin wage1 (1300-1400) Old North French “guarantee, wage” wage2 (1300-1400) Old North French wagier “to give as a guarantee”, from wage; → WAGE1 