Assay vs Gage - What's the difference?
assay | gage |
Trial, attempt, essay.
* Milton
Examination and determination; test.
* Shakespeare
The qualitative or quantitative chemical analysis of something.
Trial by danger or by affliction; adventure; risk; hardship; state of being tried.
* Spenser
Tested purity or value.
* Spenser
The act or process of ascertaining the proportion of a particular metal in an ore or alloy; especially, the determination of the proportion of gold or silver in bullion or coin.
The alloy or metal to be assayed.
To attempt (something).
*Shakespeare
*:To-night let us assay our plot.
*Milton
*:Soft words to his fierce passion she assayed .
*1936 , (Alfred Edward Housman), More Poems ,
*:Who seest the stark array / And hast not stayed to count / But singly wilt assay / The many-cannoned mount.
*2011 , ‘All-pro, anti-American’, The Economist , 28 May:
*:Speaking before a small crowd beneath antique airplanes suspended in the atrium of the State of Iowa Historical Museum, an effortfully cheerful Mr Romney assayed an early version of a stump speech I imagine will become a staple of his campaign for the Republican nomination, once it "officially" begins some time next week in New Hampshire.
(archaic) To try, attempt ((to) do something).
*1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , Acts IX:
To analyze or estimate the composition or value of (a metal, ore etc.).
(obsolete) To test the abilities of (someone) in combat; to fight.
*:
*:I wold not by my wille that ony of vs were matched with hym / Nay said sir Gawayne not so / it were shame to vs were he not assayed were he neuer soo good a knyghte
*1977 , (Geoffrey Chaucer), (The Canterbury Tales) , Penguin Classics, p.351:
*:The marquis, in obsession for his wife, / Longed to expose her constancy to test. / He could not throw the thought away or rest, / Having a marvellous passion to assay' her; / Needless, God knows, to frighten and dismay her, / He had ' assayed her faith enough before / And ever found her good; what was the need / Of heaping trial on her, more and more?
To affect.
*Spenser
*:when the heart is ill assayed
To try tasting, as food or drink.
(obsolete) To give or deposit as a pledge or security; to pawn.
* Shakespeare
(archaic) To wager, to bet.
* Ford
To bind by pledge, or security; to engage.
* Shakespeare
Something, such as a glove or other pledge, thrown down as a challenge to combat (now usually figurative).
* 1819 , Walter Scott, Ivanhoe :
*:“But it is enough that I challenge the trial by combat — there lies my gage .” She took her embroidered glove from her hand, and flung it down before the Grand Master with an air of mingled simplicity and dignity…
* 1988 , James McPherson, Battle Cry for Freedom , Oxford 2003, page 166:
(obsolete) Something valuable deposited as a guarantee or pledge; security, ransom.
*1886 , , The Princess Casamassima .
*:[I]t seemed to create a sort of material link between the Princess and himself, and at the end of three months it almost appeared to him, not that the exquisite book was an intended present from his own hand, but that it had been placed in that hand by the most remarkable woman in Europe.... [T]he superior piece of work he had done after seeing her last, in the immediate heat of his emotion, turned into a kind of proof and gage , as if a ghost, in vanishing from sight, had left a palpable relic.
(to measure)
As nouns the difference between assay and gage
is that assay is trial, attempt, essay while gage is something, such as a glove or other pledge, thrown down as a challenge to combat (now usually figurative).As verbs the difference between assay and gage
is that assay is to attempt (something) while gage is to give or deposit as a pledge or security; to pawn.As a proper noun Gage is
{{surname|from=occupations}.assay
English
Noun
(wikipedia assay) (en noun)- I am withal persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the assay than it now seems at distance.
- This cannot be, by no assay of reason.
- Through many hard assays which did betide.
- With gold and pearl of rich assay .
- (Ure)
Verb
IV , The Sage to the Young Man, ll.5-8:
- When Saul cam to Jerusalem he assayde to cople hymsilfe with the apostles, and they wer all afrayde of hym and beleved not that he was a disciple.
Derived terms
* assay office * assay mark * bioassay * immunoassay * radioimmunoassayAnagrams
*gage
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) gage, from later (etyl) or early (etyl) gager (verb), (also guagier in Old French) gage (noun), ultimately from (etyl) , from (etyl) (whence English wed). Doublet of wage, from the same origin through the Old Northern French variant wage. See also mortgage.Verb
(gag)- A moiety competent / Was gaged by our king.
- This feast, I'll gage my life, / Is but a plot to train you to your ruin.
- Great debts / Wherein my time, sometimes too prodigal, / Hath left me gaged .
Noun
(en noun)- The gage was down for a duel that would split the Democratic party and ensure the election of a Republican president in 1860.