PAY, n.
Synonyms:
| allowance, | hire, | recompense, | salary, |
| compensation, | honorarium, | remuneration, | stipend, |
| earnings, | payment, | requital, | wages. |
| fee, | |||
An allowance is a stipulated amount furnished at regular intervals as a matter of discretion or gratuity, as of food to besieged soldiers, or of money to a child or ward. Compensation is a comprehensive word signifying a return for a service done. Remuneration is applied to matters of great amount or importance. Recompense is a still wider and loftier word, with less suggestion of calculation and market value; there are services for which affection and gratitude are the sole and sufficient recompense; earnings, fees, hire, pay, salary, and wages are forms of compensation and may be included in compensation, remuneration, or recompense. Pay is commercial and strictly signifies an exact pecuniary equivalent for a thing or service, except when the contrary is expressly stated, as when we speak of "high pay" or "poor pay." Wages denotes what a worker receives. Earnings is often used as exactly equivalent to wages, but may be used with reference to the real value of work done or service rendered, and even applied to inanimate things; as, the earnings of capital. Hire is distinctly mercenary or menial, but as a noun has gone out of popular use, tho the verb to hire is common. Salary is for literary or professional work, wages for handicraft or other comparatively inferior service; a salary is regarded as more permanent than wages; an editor receives a salary, a compositor receives wages. Stipend has become exclusively a literary word. A fee is given for a single service or privilege, and is sometimes in the nature of a gratuity. Compare [REQUITE].
PEOPLE.
Synonyms:
| commonwealth, | nation, | race, | state, | tribe. |
| community, | population, |
A community is in general terms the aggregate of persons inhabiting any territory in common and viewed as having common interests; a commonwealth is such a body of persons having a common government, especially a republican government; as, the commonwealth of Massachusetts. A community may be very small; a commonwealth is ordinarily of considerable extent. A people is the aggregate of any public community, either in distinction[267] from their rulers or as including them; a race is a division of mankind in the line of origin and ancestry; the people of the United States includes members of almost every race. The use of people as signifying persons collectively, as in the statement "The hall was full of people," has been severely criticized, but is old and accepted English, and may fitly be classed as idiomatic, and often better than persons, by reason of its collectivism. As Dean Alford suggests, it would make a strange transformation of the old hymn "All people that on earth do dwell" to sing "All persons that on earth do dwell." A state is an organized political community considered in its corporate capacity as "a body politic and corporate;" as, a legislative act is the act of the state; every citizen is entitled to the protection of the state. A nation is an organized political community considered with reference to the persons composing it as having certain definite boundaries, a definite number of citizens, etc. The members of a people are referred to as persons or individuals; the individual members of a state or nation are called citizens or subjects. The population of a country is simply the aggregate of persons residing within its borders, without reference to race, organization, or allegiance; unnaturalized residents form part of the population, but not of the nation, possessing none of the rights and being subject to none of the duties of citizens. In American usage State signifies one commonwealth of the federal union known as the United States. Tribe is now almost wholly applied to rude peoples with very imperfect political organization; as, the Indian tribes; nomadic tribes. Compare [MOB].