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''homage'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔

homage - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

homage (countable and uncountable, plural homages)

  • (countable, uncountable) A demonstration of respect, as towards a person after his or her retirement or death.
    • ✤ Synonyms: salute, tribute
    • ✤ Antonym: insult
    • ✤ I ſought no homage from the Race that vvrite;/I kept, like Aſian Monarchs, from their ſight: […]1
    • ✤ When a man squeezes the hand of a pretty woman, […] she will consider such an impertinent freedom in the light of an insult, if she have any true delicacy, instead of being flattered by this unmeaning homage to beauty.2
    • ✤ It’s appropriate that we pay homage to them and the sacrifices they made.3
    • ✤ My rainy-day tour in April during the first lockdown was, in fact, a homage to Sir John Betjeman - the poet and railway campaigner whose statue can be found on the upper concourse of St Pancras station.4
  • (countable) An artistic work imitating another in a flattering style.
    • ✤ He likes to tell people that it’s a Hitchcockian thriller, but that’s kind of like saying Happy Gilmore is a homage to Woody Allen.5
  • (historical) In feudalism, the formal oath of a vassal to honor his or her lord’s rights.
    • ✤ We’ll do thee homage, and be rul’d by thee,/Love thee as our commander and our king.6
    • ✤ Synonym: (obsolete) manred

Verb

homage (third-person singular simple present homages, present participle homaging, simple past and past participle homaged)

  • (transitive, obsolete) To pay reverence to by external action.
  • (transitive, obsolete) To cause to pay homage.
    • ✤ The Austrian Crowns and Romes seven Hills she shook; >br>To her great Neptune Homag’d all his Streams7

Etymology

From Middle English homage, from Old French homage, hommage, from Medieval Latin homināticum (“homage, the service of a vassal or ‘man’”), from Latin homō (“a man, in Medieval Latin a vassal”) + -āticum (noun-forming suffix). The American pronunciations in/-ɑːʒ/and with silent h are due to confusion with the nearly synonymous doublet hommage, which is indeed pronounced/oʊˈmɑːʒ/.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈhɒmɪd͡ʒ/, /ˈhɒmɑːʒ/, /ɒˈmɑːʒ/
  • (General American) enPR: (h)ō-mäjʹ, (h)ŏmʹĭj, ŏ-mäjʹ, IPA: /(h)oʊˈmɑʒ/, /ˈ(h)ɑmɪd͡ʒ/, /ɑˈmɑʒ/8
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɪdʒ, -ɑːʒ
  • Hyphenation: hom‧age

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1735 January 13 (Gregorian calendar; indicated as 1734), [Alexander] Pope, An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr. Arbuthnot, London: […] J[ohn] Wright for Lawton Gilliver […], →OCLC, page 11, lines 214–215: ↩

  2. 1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC: ↩

  3. 2006, “New York Times”, in: ↩

  4. 2021 January 13, Christian Wolmar, “Read all about London’s Cathedrals of Steam”, in RAIL, number 922, page 62: ↩

  5. 2002, Kevin Williamson, Dawson’s Creek (TV, episode 6.01) ↩

  6. c. 1590–1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC,: ↩

  7. 1641, Abraham Cowley, A Poem on the Civil War: ↩

  8. “‘Homage’”, Ben Zimmer, “On Language”, The New York Times, November 5, 2010 ↩

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