today's entry
salary
/ˈsæləri/ n. 1.A fixed regular payment for work, typically reckoned by the month or year rather than the hour.
etymology
The word arrives salted. Latin salarium named a Roman soldier's allowance, by the traditional account the money issued to buy sal, salt: a ration so essential that pay itself took its name. The term crossed the Channel as Anglo-Norman salarie, settled into Middle English by the late 1200s as a cleric's or laborer's stipend, and has meant a fixed payment for service ever since. Seven centuries of payroll, and the salt is still in the word.
- latin salarium 1st c.
- anglo-norman salarie 12th c.
- middle english salarie c. 1280
- english salary today
cousins abroad
frsalaire essalario itsalario ptsalário
in the corpus
Appears about 24 times per million words in modern English: common enough for contracts, rare enough for poems.