salary
Americannoun
noun
verb
Usage
What is a salary? A salary is a fixed, regular payment in exchange for work. This is different from earning a fee that depends on how many hours you work (earning a fixed rate per hour) or how much work you do, sometimes called piecework. When you earn a salary, it is usually stated as the amount of money you will receive in one year for doing the work (before any taxes are paid). You will then be paid in equal amounts each pay period over the course of that year, even when you are on a paid vacation. How often you are paid will vary from company to company, with every other week and twice a month being most common. To salary someone is to pay them a salary. A salaried employee is someone who is paid a salary instead of paid another way, such as paid by the hour. Example: How can they expect me to live my best life when I’m paid on such a low salary?
Synonym Usage
See pay 1.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of salary
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English salarie, from Anglo-French, from Latin salārium “money given to soldiers to buy salt, salt money.” See sal, -ary
Compare meaning
How does salary compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
The pay or wages you earn for doing your job is called your salary. You might prefer your low-paying job to one with a higher salary because you have so much fun with your co-workers. Salary comes from the Latin word salarium, which also means "salary" and has the root sal, or "salt." In ancient Rome, it specifically meant the amount of money allotted to a Roman soldier to buy salt, which was an expensive but essential commodity. Today, salt is an inexpensive purchase at the grocery store, and your salary is certainly to be paid in your country's currency.
Vocabulary lists containing salary
Labor Day Lexicon: Words That Put You To Work
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Personal Finance and Financial Literacy - Introductory
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Personal Finance and Financial Literacy - High School
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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:
Lauer said Giftory's roughly 30 employees get a premium AI subscription costing about $200 a month -- "peanuts" stacked against an average salary of $100,000 a year, and cheap enough to make offshoring "uncompetitive."
From Barron's ● Jul. 17, 2026
Who wouldn’t love to collect a salary and generous pension at the same time?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 16, 2026
Griffiths told her all about his glittering Army career, and said he was currently working as operations director for a helicopter company in London's Canary Wharf, with a salary of £120,000.
From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2026
“You aren’t just watching your company miss earnings; you are watching the company that pays your salary simultaneously slash your retirement timeline by years.”
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 15, 2026
And like as not, when they sent the bank statement out, she would want to know why I never deposited my salary until the sixth.
From "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
Many participants in Los Angeles’s program have taken disability leave—thereby earning salaries and pensions while not working.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 16, 2026
Citing various academic studies, it also said transparency would help prevent "unequal outcomes" when salaries are offered to successful applicants.
From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2026
Doctors at the centre said if the authorities did not heed their "48-hour ultimatum for salaries and bonuses" to be paid, they would launch a "full-scale strike" with no minimum service provided.
From Barron's ● Jul. 14, 2026
She also spoke up about the huge gap in salaries between the men's and women's competitions in The Hundred.
From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2026
Because these enforcers received pitiful salaries and were prized for being quick draws, it’s not surprising that the boundary between good lawmen and bad lawmen was porous.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
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.
