Sam Littlefair

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The Origin of the Word "Wage"

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  • history
  • language
  • society

Where did we get the idea for hourly work?

Where did we get the idea to sell our time? Most humans throughout history would have found the idea completely bizarre. Today, I can sell my time to someone else and they can decide what I should do for that time.

The defining characteristic of ownership is the right to destroy something. If I borrow a book from the library or rent a car I can do anything except deliberately destroy or discard it. After I purchase the item, I am free to light it on fire or bury it in the yard.

In the case of time, this is also the difference between wage labor and other professional work relationships. When you work with a partner, an entrepreneur, a volunteer, or a friend, you have an obligation to respect their time. But you can destroy your employees' time. You own the hours that they sell to you, and you can do whatever you want with those hours — including wasting them.

Ancient Romans associated wages with slaves. A master could rent out their slaves at an hourly or daily rate. Most people sold their goods or services, not their time — that would have been perverse.

How did this strange idea become commonplace? The concept likely went back to the manor houses of feudalism. To understand this, I did a deep dive into the etymology of the word "wage." Where did the idea of an hourly payment come from? And does it have a connection to conflict ("wage a war") and gambling ("make a wager")?

"Wage" comes from an old Germanic word meaning "pledge," like a promise or a guarantee. A "wage" was a promise to follow through with a commitment. A wage would come with a token symbolizing the contract. A buyer might conclude a deal with a seller by offering a small coin, and the seller sealed the deal by accepting the coin, forming a contract. The buyer was promising to pay the full amount when the seller delivered the goods — and that promise was the buyer's wage.

A wage carries with it a sense of honor and enterprise. One old definition of wage is "to expose one's self to, as a risk." By making a commitment, you are taking on some risk.

For medieval nobility, the ideal of chivalry influenced all aspects of life — from relationships to work to literature to justice. Chivalry is the imagined code of behavior of brave knights ("chivalry" comes from the French for "knight", chevalier, who rides a horse, or cheval). The sixth English king, Alfred the Great, who lived at the end of the 800s, started the first clause of his law code, "In the first place we enjoin you, as a matter of supreme importance, that every man shall abide carefully by his oath and his pledge." Alfred decreed 40 days in prison for breaking a pledge.

Through the beginning of the second millennium, from the 1000s to the 1200s, Europe experienced astonishing economic and demographic growth (caused by climate change), concentrating wealth upwards toward the land owners — overwhelmingly kings, aristocrats, and parishes. By and large, nobles were not actually valorous knights in armor; they were medieval trust fund hipsters. Bored young nobles cosplayed as knights, evoking the idealized image of King Arthur, who — already in the High Middle Ages — existed as a mythical symbol of a bygone era. Arthur, if he really existed, had been dead for many centuries. Medieval bards resurrected the chivalrous myths as popular literature, anticipating the novel and pop culture generally. Medieval nobles took these ideas very seriously, undertaking extravagant campaigns (e.g. the Crusades) and showy contests (e.g. jousting tournaments). When they had nothing better to do, they would drink heavily and stir up petty feuds at home.

This comes through in the violent meaning of "wage," as in "to wage a war." This goes back to gentleman's duels, when one noble might pledge to meet another in battle. The thought of life-or-death duel would have been truly terrifying, and there would have been a sense that even the challenger might not make good on his challenge. So with a "wage" the challenger was saying, "I challenge you to a fight, and I promise to show up," putting his honor on the line. To make the wage official, he would offer a token — his glove — and proffer it with epic sass by throwing it to the feet of his rival. Traditionally, this would have been a gauntlet — an armored glove (from French gant for "glove") — which gives us the phrase "throw down the gauntlet" — or simply "throw down." The rival would accept the challenge by picking up the glove, or "taking up the gauntlet," which still means "accept a challenge."

As conflicts escalated in the Middle Ages, the gentleman's contests turned into international disputes, and one could "wage" a war — promising not only to duel, but to bring a whole army. The wage becomes a promise that "we'll resolve this on the battlefield."

So the idea of a wage was a gentleman's idea of honor, especially common among the nobility who had time to waste on duels and money to fritter away on enterprises, wars, and gambling (as in the sense of a "wager" — a pledge to pay a sum depending on the outcome of a game).

We have the idea of a wage in another common word, "wed," as in "wedding." In the 1400s, "wed" and "wage" had almost the same meaning — a pledge. To offer a "wed" was to make a pledge, and not necessarily a romantic one. But if a man wanted to marry a woman, he could offer a wed — a pledge to love her for the rest of his life — and a common token of that pledge would have been a ring. If the woman accepted the ring, then that formed the contract of marriage. Uncoincidentally, "engagement" comes from the same origin, "gage", which is the origin of "wage." Both "wed" and "engagement" describe a contract of lifelong monogamy.

But we no longer use the word "wed" or "wage" as a noun in the sense of a commitment anymore. So, how do we get to the modern sense of payment for work?

In the Middle Ages, the first wage laborers were actually servants working in the house of a lord. After the fall of the Roman Empire, a system of local governance called "manorialism" spread across Europe. Manorialism, based on Roman villas, was the system where a male lord ran a household and surrounding lands. Manorialism (and the overarching system of feudalism) broke the existing pagan systems of governance throughout Europe, where land would more likely have been held collectively and work distributed throughout an extended community of kith and kin. Manorialism broke up these communal structures, isolating families in separate households. The inefficiency of separate households created a shortage of labor. The women of the house now handled work previously performed in groups. The wealthier houses, which had disposable income, procured help in the form of servants. In the early days, a servant was an adolescent from a poorer household. It would have been hard to convince someone to leave their own home to do labor in a stranger's home, so the contracting lord made a sweet offer: this would be a temporary work period where the young employee could make good money and learn how to run their own household. The lord would provide room, board, sick leave, and medical care. The lord promised to pay the servant even if there was no work for them. To establish the contract (which was usually one year, with payment at the end of the year), the lord offered a coin, "God's penny," as a token of the wage. By making this promise, the lord assumed a serious social liability; if he failed to make good on his pledge, he would tarnish his own reputation and ruin his honor.

For a while, household servitude was good work that helped adolescents acquire the skills and money to start their own home. But that changed toward the end of the Middle Ages.

In the late 1400s, the economy slumped, and the age of servants increased. It took longer and longer for servants to earn enough money to start their own household. At the same time, the guild system was booming in the manufacturing industry. Guilds had adopted a similar system where young apprentices would work for a wage until they earned enough money to start their own business. But the poor economy reduced young artisans prospects, and — like servants in the lords' houses — the apprentices stayed in their masters' workshops for longer and longer. Eventually, the concept of a "wage" went from a promise for a short term engagement to permanent employment.

Wage labor exploded during England's agricultural and industrial revolutions, when commercial agriculture displaced peasants from their traditional lands, forcing them to look for wage labor in agriculture or manufacturing.

But, as it was for the Ancient Romans, the idea of wage labor never completely shed its slightly demeaning connotation. Implicit in the idea of wage labor is the idea that someone has made a promise to you, and your work is contingent on the employer following through with their promise. In principle, that should be an equal contract between two parties. But, during the commercial revolution of the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s, workers lost their bargaining power. This was in part because legislation actually impeded the rights of workers, eroding their power to negotiate. In the 1500s, for example, Queen Elizabeth outlawed unemployment by punishment of death. Eventually, employers would simply default on payment — reneging on their pledges. The idea of a wage lost its sense of honor and became a transaction — not a promise, but just a payment for hours worked.

Until the 20th century, there was considerable moral concern about this. Commentators said that the prevalence of wage labor amounted to "wage slavery," harkening back to the Roman ideas about wage labor. To sell ones time is analogous to selling ones whole body — in both cases, one is giving up autonomy over oneself. The politician, activist, and former slave Frederick Douglas said,

Experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.

Abraham Lincoln was a little softer, saying that wage labor was acceptable — so long as workers could eventually afford to start their own business. He saw the wage as a pledge that the worker could one day secure their own freedom.

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© Sam Littlefair 2025