salary

Etymology

Recorded from the late 13th century.^[1][2] From Middle English salarie,^[3][2] borrowed from Anglo-Norman salarie,^[3][4] compare Old French salaire,^[5][1] from Latin salārium (“pension, salary”),^[2] a noun use of the neuter of Latin salārius (“pertaining to salt”),^[3][5] from Latin sāl (“salt”),^[3][2] from Proto-Indo-European *sal- (“salt”).^[1]

The OED and the American Heritage Dictionary explain salārium as originally money given to Roman soldiers to buy salt;^[5][3] Wiktionary notes that there is no evidence for this in ancient sources.^[4]

References

1. [1] [2] [3] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
2. [1] [2] [3] [4] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
4. [1] [2] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
5. [1] [2] [3] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press