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 LOCALNo exact match for “Salary” in this partial English subset. That does not mean the full research corpus—or linguistic scholarship—has no record. Check the original dictionary entry ↗
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
nounexact headword
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 ↗021
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
035
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 3
openspeculativeexact word
What was the original salt connection?
Unknown. A salt allowance, purchase money, and euphemistic honorarium have all been proposed without decisive evidence.
resolvedestablishedexact word
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 184GRADE Aexact ranked word
Roman soldiers were not paid in salt.
The salt relationship is real. The viral payroll story is not.
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.
041
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
051
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
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.