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Jig vs Gage - What's the difference?

jig | gage |

In obsolete terms the difference between jig and gage

is that jig is a trick; a prank while gage is something valuable deposited as a guarantee or pledge; security, ransom.

As nouns the difference between jig and gage

is that jig is a light, brisk musical movement; a gigue 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 jig and gage

is that jig is to move briskly, especially as a dance while gage is to give or deposit as a pledge or security; to pawn.

As a proper noun Gage is

{{surname|from=occupations}.

jig

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • (music) A light, brisk musical movement; a gigue.
  • A lively dance in 6/8 (double jig), 9/8 (slip jig) or 12/8 (single jig) time; a tune suitable for such a dance. By extension, a lively traditional tune in any of these time signatures. Unqualified, the term is usually taken to refer to a double (6/8) jig.
  • they danced a jig
  • * 2012 , Tom Lamont, How Mumford & Sons became the biggest band in the world'' (in ''The Daily Telegraph , 15 November 2012)[http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/nov/15/mumford-sons-biggest-band-world]
  • Soon Marshall is doing an elaborate foot-to-foot jig , and then they're all bounding around. Shoulder dips. Yee-ha faces. It's an impromptu hoedown.
  • A dance performed by one or sometimes two individual dancers, as opposed to a dance performed by a set or team.
  • (fishing) A type of lure consisting of a hook molded into a weight, usually with a bright or colorful body.
  • A device in manufacturing, woodworking, or other creative endeavors for controlling the location, path of movement, or both of either a workpiece or the tool that is operating upon it. Subsets of this general class include machining jigs, woodworking jigs, welders' jigs, jewelers' jigs, and many others.
  • Cutting circles out of pinewood is best done with a compass-style jig .
  • (mining) An apparatus or machine for jigging ore.
  • (obsolete) A light, humorous piece of writing, especially in rhyme; a farce in verse; a ballad.
  • * (rfdate) Beaumont and Fletcher
  • A jig shall be clapped at, and every rhyme / Praised and applauded.
  • (obsolete) A trick; a prank.
  • * (rfdate) Beaumont and Fletcher
  • Is't not a fine jig , / A precious cunning, in the late Protector?

    Derived terms

    * the jig is up * dance the hempen jig

    Verb

  • To move briskly, especially as a dance.
  • The guests were jigging around on the dancefloor
  • (fishing) To fish with a jig.
  • To sing to the tune of a jig.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Jig off a tune at the tongue's end.
  • To trick or cheat; to cajole; to delude.
  • (Ford)
  • (mining) To sort or separate, as ore in a jigger or sieve.
  • To cut or form, as a piece of metal, in a jigging machine.
  • 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