Every month, millions of people check whether their salary has arrived. Few stop to wonder where the word itself comes from. The answer takes us back to ancient Rome, and to one of the most ordinary things in your kitchen: salt.
From Latin to English
“Salary” comes from the Latin word salarium. That word is built on sal, the Latin for salt, which also gives English words like “saline”. In Roman times, salarium referred to a payment or allowance, often connected with soldiers and officials.
The word travelled into English through French in the Middle Ages, alongside many other words to do with money, law and government. By then it had settled into the meaning we still use: a fixed, regular payment for work.
Were Roman soldiers really paid in salt?
This is where the story gets interesting, and where it is worth being careful. You will often read that Roman soldiers were paid in salt, or given money specifically to buy salt, and that this is where the word came from. It is a neat story, and Roman writers themselves already linked salarium with salt.
Historians, however, are not sure exactly how the connection worked. There is no clear evidence that soldiers were routinely handed salt instead of coins. The link might have been to an allowance for buying salt, to the salt trade, or to something else entirely. What is certain is the language: salarium comes from sal. The precise reason is still debated.
Why salt mattered so much
Even without a definite answer, it is easy to see why salt would turn up in words about value. Before refrigeration, salt was one of the main ways to preserve food. Meat and fish could be salted to last through winter or long journeys. People and animals also need salt to stay healthy.
Because it was so useful, salt was traded over long distances and was often taxed. Roads, towns and trade routes grew up around salt production. Something that important naturally finds its way into everyday language.
Salt in other everyday expressions
“Salary” is not the only salty phrase in English.
- Worth your salt means good at your job, or worth what you are paid. It is often linked to the same idea of salt and wages.
- Take it with a pinch of salt means don’t believe something completely. The phrase has an old Latin cousin too.
- The salt of the earth describes honest, decent, dependable people.
- Salt away means to save money, usually quietly, for later. It comes from the idea of preserving food with salt.
Wage, pay and fee
English has several words for being paid, and they come from different places.
“Wage” came into English through French from a Germanic root meaning a pledge, which fits the idea of payment owed for work. “Pay” comes, via French, from a Latin word meaning to pacify or satisfy, as in settling what someone is owed. “Fee” is related to an old Germanic word for cattle and property, from a time when livestock was a common measure of wealth.
Today we tend to use “salary” for a fixed yearly amount, often paid monthly, and “wage” for pay worked out by the hour, day or week. That difference is about modern use, not about where the words came from.
The takeaway
The next time you see the word “salary” on a payslip, you are looking at a little piece of Latin that has survived for around two thousand years. We know it comes from the Latin for salt. Whether Roman soldiers ever carried their pay home in bags of salt is a good story, but one to take with a pinch of salt.