Middle English: from Old French gage (noun), gager (verb), of Germanic origin; related to wage and wed.

• engage from Late Middle English:

  Gage is an old word that means ‘a valued object deposited as a guarantee of good faith’ and, as a verb, ‘to give as a pledge’. An Old French word related to wage (Middle English) and wedding (see marry), it is the root of engage. Engage originally meant ‘give as a pledge’ and ‘pawn or mortgage’, later coming to express the ideas ‘to pledge or guarantee’ and ‘to enter into a contract’. People have been getting engaged to be married since the beginning of the 18th century: the first recorded example is by Henry Fielding (1707–54), author of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones.

Mid 19th century: from the name of Sir William Gage (1657–1727), the English botanist who introduced it to England.