salary

SAL-uh-ree/ˈsæl.ə.ɹi/

3 meanings of salary

1
nouncountable
A fixed amount of money paid to a worker on a monthly or annual basis rather than hourly, implying professional or autonomous work.
The company offered her an annual salary of sixty thousand dollars.
Negotiating a higher salary requires research into industry pay standards.
Similarincome, pay, wage, remuneration, earnings
Note
Behind the word is salt. Middle English salarie came through Anglo-Norman and Old French salaire from Latin salārium, "wages", the neuter of the adjective salārius, "related to salt". Many explanations have been offered for how salt became pay, and none is certain. Shakespeare's Hamlet pairs it with hire, payment for a job done. Upton Sinclair's 1935 line about a man whose salary depends upon his not understanding shows the modern feel of a steady income.
2
verbtransitive
To pay a worker on the basis of a week or longer, especially when converting from another form of compensation.
Management voted to salary the warehouse crew, ending years of hourly pay.
Some startups salary their interns to attract long-term talent.
Note
Its past participle carries most of the load: salaried staff, a salaried post, workers who were salaried after years of hourly or piece-rate pay. The forms are regular but worth spelling carefully. The y becomes i in salaries and salaried but stays in salarying, as it does in other verbs ending in a consonant plus y.
3
adjectiveobsolete
Saline; containing or consisting of salt.
Note
The salt left in the word: here the literal meaning of Latin salārius, "related to salt", survives on its own. It is the same adjective behind the noun for fixed pay. The sense is obsolete, so a reader meets it only in older writing. For anything written today, saline or salty is the word to use.

Practice

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Origin

It comes through Middle English salarie and Old French salaire from Latin salarium ("wages"), the neuter of the adjective salarius ("related to salt"), from sal ("salt"). It is generally assumed salarium was short for salarium argentum ("salt money"), though that phrase is not attested; one commonly cited but unproven idea is that Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, while another is that the money was used to buy salt and other items.