wages

n. (wā"jĕz)

[Plural of wage; cf. F. gages, pl., wages, hire. See Wage, n.]

1. 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.

Rom. vi. 23.

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.
[Webster 1913 Suppl.]

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. Encyc. Brit.

Syn. -- See under Wage, n.

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IN BRIEF: n. -Carries on (wars, battles, or campaigns).

Each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens. — Cathy Guisewite

Quotes:

"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work." - Thomas Carlyle

"I've always been worried about people who are willing to work for nothing. Sometimes that's all you get from them, nothing." - Sam Ervin

"The high wage begins down in the shop. If it is not created there it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with the necessity for work." - Henry Ford

"The world does not pay for what a person knows, but it pays for what a person does with what he knows." - Laurence Lee

"Give the laborer his wages before his perspiration be dry." - Mohammed

"People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up." - Ogden Nash

See more famous quotes about Wages