payroll
Americannoun
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a list of employees to be paid, with the amount due to each.
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the sum total of these amounts.
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the actual money on hand for distribution.
The bandits got away with the payroll.
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the total number of people employed by a business firm or organization.
verb (used with object)
noun
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a list of employees, specifying the salary or wage of each
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the total of these amounts or the actual money equivalent
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( as modifier )
a payroll tax
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Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of payroll
Explanation
A company's payroll is a complete list of everyone who works there and how much money they make. The small coffee shop where you work might have just four employees on its payroll. Any business or organization with a paid staff has a payroll. A school's payroll might include the principal, teachers, office workers, school nurse, and maintenance workers, for example. You can also use the term payroll for the entire amount of money that a company pays its workers over the course of a year, or for the department that calculates these salaries and hands out paychecks.
Vocabulary lists containing payroll
This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for October 22–October 28, 2022
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Government and the Economy, Sections 3–5
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Century 21 Accounting, 9e, Chapters 11-14
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The Labour Force Survey, which it uses to report payroll and employment figures, consistently sees low response rates.
From BBC • Jun. 18, 2026
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 172,000 in May, and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%.
From Barron's • Jun. 17, 2026
They could include higher payroll taxes or extending the levy to investment income.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 17, 2026
The Medicare trust fund is primarily financed by a 2.9% payroll tax, half of which is paid by the employer and the other half by the employee.
From MarketWatch • Jun. 15, 2026
We have to be careful of being overheard by someone on the SIM secret payroll.
From "Before We Were Free" by Julia Alvarez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
