Maybe it’s a stupid question to ask… I wonder if there are any differences in the usage and meaning between the words “salary” and “wage”.
Added (15.03.2011, 23:22) --------------------------------------------- The thing that confuses me most of all: I’m used to saying “wages” and I’ve never seen the second word in singular form, but my dictionary claims it exists!
It is not human to be without shame and without desire. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Both terms mean a fixed payment made to an employee. 1) The difference is that a salary is given monthly and a wage (or wages) is a weekly payment. Examples: - It's a good job and she's paid regularly on a definite day at the end of each month. I think it's a very good salary for someone her age. - He does a lot of odd jobs and gets a good wage of about $200 at the end of each week. I think it is a very good wage for him being only 19. 2) The word 'SALARY' means a regular fixed amount of money paid (in Russian it means 'оклад'). The size of payment never changes whether you have a lot of work or little work and a lot of holidays. In this case, it can be a weekly salary. The 'wage(s)' means a fixed or changeable amount of money depending on how much work you do or how many hours you work (in Russian in means somthing like 'заработок') and is always associated with weekly pays. 3) Sometimes, there are wrong explanations in dictionaries in which you find that a salary is money paid to those who do mental work, while 'wages' is money paid to those who do physical or manual work. No, the difference is shown above. 4) Besides, if one works in many jobs and get money from everuwhere, he has wages! 5) There is another word that means a sum of money paid to someone who offered you soliciting, juridical, consulting or training services - 'fee', that can be daily, weekly, monthly paid by a client, not by an employer. P.S.: you can find some more explanations in the discussion at http://wiki.answers.com/Q...._a_wage
