Also 5 fery-, fariage, 6 ferrage, 9 ferryage. [f. FERRY sb. and v. + -AGE.]
1. The action or business of ferrying a person or thing over a stream or other water; conveyance over a ferry.
c. 1450. Merlin, 606. We requere feriage for oure horse at this forde.
1464. Mann. & Househ. Exp., 241. To pay ffur my ladyis fferyage att the frery.
1678–96. in Phillips.
1691. T. H[ale], Acc. New Invent., p. xcv. The right of the Ferriage over all Rivers between the first Bridges and the Sea is a Perquisite of Admiralty.
1835. W. Irving, A Tour on the Prairies, xii. The Commissioner and myself were so well pleased with this Indian mode of ferriage, that we determined to trust ourselves in the buffalo hide.
1880. Miss Bird, Japan, II. 268. We were detained, not reluctantly, for a length of time waiting ferriage.
2. The fare or price paid for the use of a ferry.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 156/2. Feryage, feriagium.
1573. Abp. Parker Let., in Corr. (1858), 455. Journeying, ferriage, carriage … &c.
1599. Minsheu, Sp. Dict., Fletadór, one that payeth ferriage, or passage money.
1735. Col. Rec. Pennsylv., IV. 22. An Act for ascertaining the Rates of Ferriages to be taken at divers Ferries.
1761. Franklin, Letter to Henry Potts, Wks. 1887, III. 145. The ferrymen were generally very dilatory, and backward to carry the post in bad weather, availing themselves of every excuse, as they were by law to receive no ferriage of him.
1807–8. W. Irving, Salmagundi (1824), 58. Charon—river Styx—ghosts;—Major Hunt—good story—ferryage nine-pence.
1859. R. F. Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa, in Jrnl. R. Geog. Soc., XXIX. 194. A second delay is here caused by the necessity of settling ferriage with the Mutwale, or Lord of the Ferry.
