salary
/ˈsæləɹi/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.36 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
3
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
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.
verb
To pay on the basis of a period of a week or longer, especially to convert from another form of compensation.
Example Sentences
- "This is hire and salary, not revenge."
- "Andrew Houſtoun and Adam Muſhet, being Tackſmen of the Excize, did Imploy Thomas Rue to be their Collector, and gave him a Sallary of 30. pound Sterling for a year."
- "I used to say to our audiences: “It is difficult to get a man understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”"
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 is no evidence for either of these claims from ancient sources. Another is that the phrase meant “money used to buy salt [and other miscellaneous items]”.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: salarie, salaire, salārium
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈsæləɹi/
- British English: /ˈsæləɹi/
Usage
Inflected Forms
salaries (plural)
sallary (alternative, obsolete)
sellary (alternative, obsolete)
salaries (present, singular)
salarying (participle, present)
salaried (participle, past)
salaried (past)
more salary (comparative)
most salary (superlative)