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It’s easy to be confused by wire gauge, especially since, as the number gets lower, the size of the actual wire goes up! AWG stands for American Wire Gauge and is a specification of sorts that gives specific wire dimensions for, among other things, electrical wires. The sizes (gauges) range from 0000 (“four aught” the largest) to 40 (the smallest). Wire gauge is a term that refers to how wire is made – namely by pulling it through a die. A higher gauge, in theory, designates how many times the wire was pulled through a die to reduce its diameter. You can figure that a wire doubles in size every 6 steps in gauge.