Payroll

How to spell payroll

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce payroll

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does payroll mean?

1. nounThe list of a company's employees and the total amount of wages it pays them, or the department that handles this.

Payroll in a sentence

• The company added two new hires to the payroll this month.

• Rising wages pushed the monthly payroll above budget.

Where does payroll come from?

Language of origin: French

Payroll is a transparent English compound, joining the verb and noun 'pay' with the old sense of 'roll' meaning a written list or register. 'Pay' itself came into English through Old French 'payer', from Latin 'pacare', which literally meant 'to pacify' or 'to appease'; the link is that settling a debt kept a creditor satisfied. 'Roll' descends from Old French 'rolle' and Latin 'rotulus', a small wheel, because documents were once written on long sheets wound into a cylinder, so a 'roll' became any official list of names. Records were kept of who was owed wages, and that register of employees and their pay came to be called the pay roll, written as two words in the 1700s before fusing into one. The modern meaning has broadened from the physical list to the whole financial process of paying staff, but the spelling still hides its double L, a frequent slip for writers who expect a single L at the end.

How the word is built

• pay (compound first element)
• roll (a list or register)