Other forms: mercenaries
A mercenary is a soldier who fights for whoever pays. Hire mercenaries, a band of mercenaries, foreign mercenaries.
The Geneva Conventions deny them the protections given to soldiers, which is a real consequence of the definition. As an adjective it means motivated only by money, and that sense is used far more often than the noun.
1nounmercenaryA soldier who fights for whoever pays.
“The king could not trust his own army, so he hired mercenaries from abroad to guard the palace.”
mercenary is a soldier.
The Latin is wages, the same root that gives merchant. A mercenary fights for the wage and for nothing else at all.
hooks ontomerchant
Latin mercenarius means hired for pay, from merces, wages.
Latin
mercēnārius — hired for money
Middle English
mercenarye — someone paid to work, hireling
English, today
mercenary
Built from
From Middle English mercenarye (“someone paid to work, hireling”), from Latin mercēnārius (“hired for money”), from mercēs (“reward, wages, price”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA