Get paid means to receive money for your work, to get your wages. It's used both for regular pay (I get paid on Fridays) and for one-off payments (I got paid for the translation). Get shows that you're the one being paid, not the one paying.
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get paid + for + noun/-ing; get paid + amount; get paid weekly/monthly/on + day
- In my new job I get paid every two weeks, which makes budgeting easier.
- She got paid £200 for designing the menu for a local café.
- Do interns get paid at your company, or is the internship unpaid?
What changed
First versionWe get salary on the fifth of every month.
RevisionWe get paid on the fifth of every month.
Get salary can look like a natural way to talk about payday, but English says get paid, literally receive payment. Besides, salary without an article doesn't work grammatically here.
A salary is fixed pay, and it's often given as a yearly figure: a salary of £35,000. So when asking about payday, people say When do you get paid?, and keep salary for talking about how much someone earns. Pay by the hour or week is called wages.
Your turn
I ___ for the translation yesterday, so I can finally buy new boots.
Show the answer
got paid — The speaker received the money, so got paid, and now there's money for boots. Paid for the translation would mean he paid for it himself, leaving less money to spend.
Describe your first job or part-time job. Say what you were paid for and how often.
At my first summer job I got paid every Friday for selling ice cream on the beach.
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