payroll

plural payrolls · alternative pay roll

1. A list of employees who receive salary or wages, together with the amounts due to each.

   Magazines kept aristocrats on the payroll to facilitate access to jet-set playgrounds like Corfu and Mustique.

   2025 June 27, Michael M. Grynbaum, “The Concorde-and-Caviar Era of Condé Nast, When Magazines Ruled the Earth”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 27 Jun 2025

2. The total sum of money paid to employees.
3. accountingThe calculation of salaries and wages and the deduction of taxes etc.; the department in a company responsible for this.
4. euphemisticA list of people to receive bribes.

   We can spread a rumor this cop was dirty. Look, Tom, we have newspaper people on the payroll, don't we?

   1972, The Godfather, spoken by Michael Corleone

   1 more example

   I know that the deal started with the boys in Santiago, because they’ve been on the d’Anconia pay roll for centuries — well, no, ‘pay roll’ is an honorable word, it would be more exact to say that d’Anconia Copper has been paying them protection money for centuries — isn't that what your gangsters call it?

   1957, Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

present singular third person payrolls · participle present payrolling · participle past payrolled · past payrolled · alternative pay roll

1. transitiveTo place on a payroll (noun sense 1).

   Grantees may elect to payroll the enrollees through their own payroll system if the payroll system is consistent with regulations contained herein.

   1985, The Code of Federal regulations of the United States of America, page 37