salary (n.)
A salary is what you are paid for your work. It came through French from the Latin salarium, which is formed from sal, salt. That much is not in dispute.2
The story attached to it is that Roman soldiers were paid in salt, and the story has a source. Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century, says salt is bound up with public honours and military service, and that salarium is named from it.1
That is all he says. He does not write that soldiers were paid in salt, and no other ancient writer does either. The sentence about legions receiving salt instead of coin appears to be a later addition, filled in by dictionary-makers who wanted the connection to mean something definite.3
So the salt is genuinely in the word and the reason for it is missing. I could not find an ancient source for the payment, and the scholarship says there is none to find.13
She took a cut in salary.