payroll
Americannoun
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payrolls
plural
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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.
See Examples For:
On the other, you have the Brewers, with the 17th-ranked payroll in baseball and a miraculous ability to win games without hitting home runs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026
Right now, the program is funded primarily through payroll taxes.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 9, 2026
Right now, the payroll tax is only applied to traditional wages.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 9, 2026
Employers can donate and let workers fund accounts with payroll deductions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
Her father explained the loans, the payments, the billing, and the payroll.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
Three playoff teams — the Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Guardians and Chicago White Sox — rank among the six lowest payrolls, according to MLB present-day salary calculations.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
The weak payrolls number can provide a slightly more balanced sentiment around interest rates by dropping the urgency for another Fed hike while keeping inflation as the central bank’s primary concern, he says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
The household survey includes the self-employed, agricultural workers and others not on company payrolls.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2026
US non-farm payrolls figures later Friday are in focus as traders try to ascertain the Fed's next move after last month's rate hike.
From Barron's ● Oct. 2, 2026
They include payrolls, for example, which, of course, never get into clearings.
From The Value of Money by Benjamin M. Anderson
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.
