Noun: salary
| Singular | salary |
| Plural | salaries |
Sample Sentences
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This is hire and salary, not revenge. [c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii]:]
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Andrew Houſtoun and Adam Muſhet, being Tackſmen of the Excize, did Imploy Thomas Rue to be their Collector, and gave him a Sallary of 30. pound Sterling for a year. [1668 July 3rd, James Dalrymple, “Thomas Rue contra Andrew Houſtoun” in The Deciſions of the Lords of Council & Seſſion I (Edinburgh, 1683), page 547]
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I used to say to our audiences: “It is difficult to get a man understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” [1935, Upton Sinclair, chapter XX, in I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, page 109:]
Nouns inflected like salary
clitoridectomy,
royal jelly,
whoopsy,
surrogacy,
urinary,
rastrography,
renoscopy,
sourtop blueberry,
forcible entry,
superficiary,
lipidosity,
potability,
phonography,
hyperproperty,
greenery,
conjugality,
ring singularity,
Brittany,
ignobility,
obscurity, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English salarie, from Anglo-Norman salarie, from Old French salaire, from Latin salārium (“wages”), the neuter form of the adjective salārius (“related to salt”), from sal (“salt”). There have been various attempts to explain how the Latin term for “wages” came from the adjective “related to salt”. It is generally assumed that salārium was an abbreviation of salārium argentum (“salt money”), though that phrase is not attested. A commonly cited theory states that the phrase meant “money consisting of salt”, because, supposedly, Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, but there is no evidence for either of these claims from ancient sources. Another is that the phrase meant “money used to buy salt [and other miscellaneous items]”. See: Middle English Nouns '
salarie', Latin Nouns '
salārium'.