Wages

wages
    n 1: a recompense for worthy acts or retribution for wrongdoing;
         "the wages of sin is death"; "virtue is its own reward"
         [syn: {wages}, {reward}, {payoff}]
    

Wages \Wa"ges\ (w[=a]"j[e^]z), n. plural in termination, but
   singular in signification. [Plural of wage; cf. F. gages,
   pl., wages, hire. See {Wage}, n.]
   1. A compensation given to a hired person for services; price
      paid for labor; recompense; hire. See {Wage}, n., 2.
      [1913 Webster]

            The wages of sin is death.            --Rom. vi. 23.
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   2. (Economics) 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.
      [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

   {Wages fund} (Polit. Econ.), the aggregate capital existing
      at any time in any country, which theoretically is
      unconditionally destined to be paid out in wages. It was
      formerly held, by Mill and other political economists,
      that the average rate of wages in any country at any time
      depended upon the relation of the wages fund to the number
      of laborers. This theory has been greatly modified by the
      discovery of other conditions affecting wages, which it
      does not take into account. --Encyc. Brit.
      [1913 Webster]

   Syn: See under {Wage}, n.
        [1913 Webster]
    

Wages
Rate of (mention only in Matt. 20:2); to be punctually paid
(Lev. 19:13; Deut. 24:14, 15); judgements threatened against the
withholding of (Jer. 22:13; Mal. 3:5; comp. James 5:4); paid in
money (Matt. 20:1-14); to Jacob in kind (Gen. 29:15, 20; 30:28;
31:7, 8, 41).
    

WAGES, contract. A compensation given to a hired person for his or her 
services. As to servants wages, see Chitty, Contr. 171 as to sailors' wages, 
Abbott on Ship. 473; generally, see 22. Vin. Abr. 406; Bac. Abr. Master, 
&c., H; Marsh. Ins. 89; 2 Lill. Abr. 677; Peters' Dig. Admiralty, pl. 231, 
et seq.