salary

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A fixed amount of money paid to a worker, usually calculated on a monthly or annual basis, not hourly, as wages. Implies a degree of professionalism and/or autonomy.

   This is hire and salary, not revenge.

2. 2
   noun

   something that remunerates

3. 3
   verb

   To pay on the basis of a period of a week or longer, especially to convert from another form of compensation.

4. 4
   adj

   Saline.

Etymology

From Middle English salarie, from Anglo-Norman salarie, from Old French salaire, from Latin salārium (“wages”), the neuter form of the adjective salārius (“related to salt”), from sal (“salt”). There have been various attempts to explain how the Latin term for “wages” came from the adjective “related to salt”. It is generally assumed that salārium was an abbreviation of salārium argentum (“salt money”), though that phrase is not attested. A commonly cited theory states that the phrase meant “money consisting of salt”, because, supposedly, Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, but there i…