payroll

Payroll is a straightforward compound of pay and roll, joining the act of paying with the physical roll — a scroll or rolled document — once used to record who was owed what.

The word simply combines its two parts, describing a record kept on a roll before coming to mean the whole system of paying employees.

It shares its second half with roll, the rolled-up document or list that gave the word its literal image of accounts kept on a scroll.