GRAPH-WIDE SEARCH
MEASURE THE GRAPH ↗NOT JUST A DICTIONARY LOOKUP
6 EVIDENCE COLLECTIONSSEARCH
THE GRAPH.
Find a modern word—or search sideways through reconstructed roots, historical forms, meanings, languages, scholars, sources, claims, disputes, and witnesses.
WIKTIONARY VIA KAIKKI / WIKTEXTRACT
Imported dictionary evidence
These are source reports, not reviewed *SET-U ancestry. A list of templates or numbered etymologies is not an ancestor chain. Scholarly disagreements remain in the original source text.
35,981 English word records · 45,491 etymology sections in this online subset
PARTIAL ENGLISH COVERAGE · FULL CORPUS REMAINS LOCAL1 source section across 1 headword matching “Alar”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
alarEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
From Latin ala (“wing”) + -ar (adjectival suffix).
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗INDEPENDENT SOURCE LIBRARY
More sources for this spelling
These are spelling matches, not a claim of identical senses or agreement. Historical accounts retain their own editions and limits; none is automatically promoted into reviewed ancestry.
Browse the independently attributed sources →012
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
nounhistorical form
salary
Fixed compensation, inherited through French from a Latin term associated with salt.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun · verb · adjectivecontrarian claim
salt
Common salt and the wider family of saline substances and figurative savor; an inherited Germanic word in a deep Indo-European salt family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗023
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Anglo-French / Indo-European
salarie / salaire
compensation, payment
- DATE
- medieval
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
salary
fixed regular compensation
- DATE
- 13th c.–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
salārium
official payment or allowance
- DATE
- Roman imperial period
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
035
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 3
openspeculativeposition text
What was the original salt connection?
Unknown. A salt allowance, purchase money, and euphemistic honorarium have all been proposed without decisive evidence.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Were soldiers paid in salt?
No ancient source supports the familiar claim. Pliny notes only an undefined connection between salt and military honors or payments.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Does the salt relationship prove soldiers were paid in salt?
No. Salt and salary belong to the same comparative salt family, but the real lexical kinship does not establish the viral literal-payment story.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 2
RANK 143GRADE Acontrarian claim
Salary is truly salt's cousin—and the famous story is still false.
Salt and salary meet in the inherited salt family. Real kinship does not prove Roman soldiers received ordinary wages in literal salt.
RANK 184GRADE Aranked reveal
Roman soldiers were not paid in salt.
The salt relationship is real. The viral payroll story is not.
043
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
historical dictionary11 CLAIM LINKS
Salary — Word History
Merriam-Webster Editors / 2026
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗scholarly article4 CLAIM LINKS
Yoğurt Sözcüğünün Etimolojisi Üzerine Bir Deneme
Emin Erdem Özbek / 2022
publisherAUDIT EVERY USE ↗lexical database3 CLAIM LINKS
Logeion: salarium
Classics Department Editors
source titleAUDIT EVERY USE ↗052
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
DIRECTLY INSPECTEDprinted book
A banking-exchange passage in John Harris’s Lexicon technicum uses Salary for the banker’s compensation.
salary / salary / 1704
Lexicon technicum: or, an universal English dictionary of arts and scienceswitness excerpt / OPEN RECORD ↗SOURCE REPORTEDlexical corpus record
Latin literary and epigraphic record
salārium / salary / Roman imperial period
Logeion: salariumreporting source / OPEN RECORD ↗06
SEARCH IS DISCOVERY, NOT PROOF
EVERY RESULT OPENS A PERMANENT EVIDENCE RECORD.
Matching text only locates a record. It does not raise confidence, settle a dispute, establish cognacy, or turn a source report into direct inspection. Follow the result into its citations and editorial limits.