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Cage vs Gage - What's the difference?

cage | gage |

As a proper noun cage

is .

As a verb gage is

.

cage

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • an enclosure made of bars, normally to hold animals.
  • We keep a bird in a cage .
    The tigers are in a cage to protect the public.
    The most dangerous prisoners are locked away in a cage .
  • the passenger compartment of a lift
  • (hockey, water polo) the goal.
  • (US derogatory slang) automobile
  • (figuratively) Something that hinders freedom.
  • (athletics) The area from which competitors throw a discus or hammer.
  • (obsolete) A place of confinement for malefactors.
  • (Shakespeare)
  • * Lovelace
  • Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage .
  • An outer framework of timber, enclosing something within it.
  • the cage of a staircase
    (Gwilt)
  • (engineering) A skeleton frame to limit the motion of a loose piece, such as a ball valve.
  • A wirework strainer, used in connection with pumps and pipes.
  • (mining) The drum on which the rope is wound in a hoisting whim.
  • (baseball) The catcher's wire mask.
  • Derived terms

    * birdcage * cageling * cagey * roll cage

    Verb

    (cag)
  • To put into a cage.
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author=(Henry Petroski)
  • , title= Geothermal Energy , volume=101, issue=4, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame. With more settled people, animals were harnessed to capstans or caged in treadmills to turn grist into meal.}}
  • To keep in a cage.
  • To track individual responses to direct mail, either (advertising) to maintain and develop mailing lists or (politics) to identify people who are not eligible to vote because they do not reside at the registered addresses.
  • (figuratively) To restrict someone's movement or creativity.
  • Derived terms

    * caged in * uncage * caging list * rattle someone's cage

    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)
  • (obsolete) To give or deposit as a pledge or security; to pawn.
  • * Shakespeare
  • A moiety competent / Was gaged by our king.
  • (archaic) To wager, to bet.
  • * Ford
  • This feast, I'll gage my life, / Is but a plot to train you to your ruin.
  • To bind by pledge, or security; to engage.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Great debts / Wherein my time, sometimes too prodigal, / Hath left me gaged .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • 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:
  • The gage was down for a duel that would split the Democratic party and ensure the election of a Republican president in 1860.
  • (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.
  • Etymology 2

    See (m).

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Verb

    (gag)
  • (to measure)
  • Usage notes
    The spelling gage'' is encountered primarily in American English, but even there it is less common than the spelling ''gauge .

    Etymology 3

    Named after the Gage family of England, who imported the greengage from France.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A subspecies of plum, .
  • Derived terms
    * blue gage * frost gage * golden gage * greengage