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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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 cubicle-based jobs—customer service, data entry, payroll processing—created a vital ladder to the middle class, helping replace factory work lost to overseas competition.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 27, 2026
By doing this, you can take advantage of federal family payroll tax exemptions, which means payments to your child are not subject to certain taxes, such as Social Security, Medicare and unemployment taxes.
From MarketWatch • May 26, 2026
Opening this season with baseball’s highest payroll and spending some time with baseball’s worst record?
From Los Angeles Times • May 20, 2026
“We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions,” Roosevelt said in 1941.
From Barron's • May 11, 2026
“Still, you did good, kid. I just might have to put you on my payroll permanently.”
From Full of Beans by Jennifer L. Holm
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.
