From Latin 'merces' (wages), from 'merx' (goods) — shares its root with 'merchant,' 'mercy,' and the god Mercury.
A professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army; motivated primarily by personal gain rather than principle.
From Latin 'mercēnārius' (hired, paid), derived from 'mercēs, mercēdis' (wages, reward, hire), itself from 'merx, mercis' (goods, merchandise, wares). The PIE root is *merk- (to seize, to lay hold of, to take a share of goods), a root that generated the entire Latin commercial vocabulary: 'mercātor' (merchant), 'mercātus' (market, trade), 'commercium' (commerce, trading), 'mercēs' (price, wages), and even 'Mercurius' (Mercury, the divine patron of merchants and travellers). A mercenary is, at the root level, a person whose loyalty