Dictionary

wainage en · NOUN

Etymology

From wain + -age. Compare Old French waaignage.

Meanings

1. (UK, countable, obsolete, uncountable) Gainage; the team and implements necessary for the cultivation of land.
   • Bracton says in one place that the villein has an action against his lord if the lord should take away the villein's wainage, i.e. plough and plough-team. 1900, William James Ashley, Surveys, Historic and Economic, page 46:
2. (countable, uncountable) The provision of carriages, carts, etc., for the transportation of goods or produce.
   • The royal purveyors, who provided for the wants of the peripatetic court, claimed the right of " caption " or seizure , as well as those of “preemption” or compulsory purchase and of "wainage" or the right to horse and wagon for the king's service. 1909, A. M. Chambers, A Constitutional History of England, page 134:
   • Provendering and wainage without consent of owner shall be allowed only on due payment in money. 1887, Rudolph Gneist, Augustus Henry Keane, The Student's History of the English Parliament, page 99:
   • Such an extraordinary wainage could only have been accomplished by the mode of forced requisitions, and by devoting 5000 extra horses to the service; for the conveyance to Lyons was required of 14,000 bombs, 34,000 balls, 300,000 pounds of powder, 800,000 cartridges, and 130 pieces of ordnance. 1845, Adolphe Thiers, translated by Thomas W. Redhead, The HIstory of the French Revolution, page 342:
   • There were also services such as wainage, which may have been very onerous, but were not obligations of a servile character. 1916, James Maclehose, The Scottish Historical Review - Volume 13, page 184:

Forms