payroll

Etymology

It was formed from English pay + roll in English.^[2][3][4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A list of the people to be paid by an employer, with the sums due to each: 1740, in Colley Cibber's Apology for his life.^[2][3][4] Dictionary.com dates the word to 1765–75.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The phrase on the payroll, in the pay of an employer, is recorded from 1862, and later also for someone under the control of another, as by bribery.^[2][4] The sense "the total sum paid out in wages for a period", and the cash brought to a factory to pay them, is recorded from 1861 in the OED and by 1898 in Etymonline.^[2][3]

Timeline

• 1740 – a list of employees and their pay.^[2][4]
• 1861 – the total wages of a period; cash for paying them.^[2]
• 1862 – on the payroll.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A list of the people employed by a company or organization, with the wages or salaries due to each: The firm has two hundred people on its payroll.
2. The total amount paid to employees over a period: a monthly payroll of half a million.
3. The work of managing employees' pay in a company, or the department that does it: the payroll department.

Word family

• payroller
• payroll tax

Related words

• pay
• roll
• salary
• wage

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House