salary

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A fixed amount of money that an employee is paid regularly, usually each month, for their work.

   She earns a good salary as a software engineer.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Salary entered English in the Middle English period through Old French from Latin salarium. A salarium was originally a Roman soldier's allowance of money for buying salt, and the word ultimately goes back to Latin sal “salt.”

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…

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