WAGER, n.

1. Something deposited, laid or hazarded on the event of a contest or some unsettled question; a bet. Besides these plates for horse-races, the wagers may be as the persons please. – Temple. If any atheist can stake his soul for a wager against such an inexhaustible disproportion … – Bentley.
2. Subject on which bets are laid. – Sidney.
3. In law, an offer to make oath of innocence or non-indebtedness; or the act of making oath, together with the oaths of eleven compurgators, to fortify the defendant's oath. Wager of battle, is when the tenant in a writ of right, offers to prove his right by the body of his champion, and throwing down his glove as a gage or pledge, thus wages or stipulates battle with the champion of the demandant, who by taking up the glove, accepts the challenge. The champions, armed with batons, enter the list, and taking each other by the hand, each swears to the justice of the cause of the party for whom he appears; they then fight till the stars appear, and if the champion of the tenant can defend himself till that time, his cause prevails. – Blackstone.

To lay; to bet; to hazard on the issue of a contest, or on some question that is to be decided, or on some casualty. – Dryden.

1. Something deposited, laid, or hazarded on the event of a contest or an unsettled question; a bet; a stake; a pledge.
   
   

   Besides these plates for horse races, the wagers may be as the persons please. Sir W. Temple.

   If any atheist can stake his soul for a wager against such an inexhaustible disproportion, let him never hereafter accuse others of credulity. Bentley.

2. To hazard on the issue of a contest, or on some question that is to be decided, or on some casualty] to lay; to stake; to bet.
   
   

   And wagered with him
   Pieces of gold 'gainst this which he wore. Shak.

3. To make a bet; to lay a wager.
   
   

   'T was merry when
   You wagered on your angling. Shak.

4. 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.
5. A contract by which two parties or more agree that a certain sum of money, or other thing, shall be paid or delivered to one of them, on the happening or not happening of an uncertain event.
   
   
   Bouvier.

   * At common law a wager is considered as a legal contract which the courts must enforce unless it be on a subject contrary to public policy, or immoral, or tending to the detriment of the public, or affecting the interest, feelings, or character of a third person. In many of the United States an action can not be sustained upon any wager or bet. Chitty. Bouvier.

6. That on which bets are laid; the subject of a bet.
   
   

   Wager of battel, or Wager of battle (O. Eng. Law), the giving of gage, or pledge, for trying a cause by single combat, formerly allowed in military, criminal, and civil causes. In writs of right, where the trial was by champions, the tenant produced his champion, who, by throwing down his glove as a gage, thus waged, or stipulated, battle with the champion of the demandant, who, by taking up the glove, accepted the challenge. The wager of battel, which has been long in disuse, was abolished in England in 1819, by a statute passed in consequence of a defendant's having waged his battle in a case which arose about that period. See Battel. -- Wager of law (Law), the giving of gage, or sureties, by a defendant in an action of debt, that at a certain day assigned he would take a law, or oath, in open court, that he did not owe the debt, and at the same time bring with him eleven neighbors (called compurgators), who should avow upon their oaths that they believed in their consciences that he spoke the truth. -- Wager policy. (Insurance Law) See under Policy.