PIE word
*sḗh₂l
From Middle English salt, from Old English sealt, from Proto-West Germanic *salt, from Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *sḗh₂l (“salt”). Doublet of sal, salary, and salsa, all ultimately from Latin sāl (“salt”), which it superseded as the general term for "salt".
Cognate with Dutch zout, German Salz, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish salt.
Meanings
Of water: containing salt, saline.
After a few days of north-west wind, the waters of the Gordon will be found salt for twelve miles up from the bar. 1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 97:
Why the Sea is Salt
Treated with salt as a preservative; cured with salt, salted.
salt beef
Philander went into the next room[…]and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
Of land, fields etc.: flooded by the sea.
a salt marsh
Of plants: growing in the sea or on land flooded by the sea.
salt grass
Related to salt deposits, excavation, processing or use.
The salt factory is a key connecting element in the seawater infrastructure.
a salt mine
(figuratively, obsolete) Bitter; sharp; pungent.
I have a salt and sorry rheum offends me […]. c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iv]:
(figuratively, obsolete) Salacious; lecherous; lustful; (of animals) in heat.
It is impossible you should see this, / Were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys, / As salt as wolves in pride, and fools as gross / As ignorance made drunk. c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii]:
And when he saw that all the dogs were flocking about her, yarring at the retardment of their accesse to her, and every way keeping such a coyle with her, as they are wont to do about a proud or salt bitch, he forthwith departed […] 1653, Thomas Urquhart, transl., The First Book of the works of Mr. Francis Rabelais, Book 2, Chapter 22, p. 153:
PIE word
*sḗh₂l
From Middle English salt, from Old English sealt, from Proto-West Germanic *salt, from Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *sḗh₂l (“salt”). Doublet of sal, salary, and salsa, all ultimately from Latin sāl (“salt”), which it superseded as the general term for "salt".
Cognate with Dutch zout, German Salz, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish salt.
Meanings
(countable, uncountable) A common substance, chemically consisting mainly of sodium chloride (NaCl), used extensively as a food ingredient, seasoning, condiment, and preservative.
Near-synonyms: table salt, rock salt, road salt
Take gode almaunde mylke y-draw wyth wyn, an let hem boyle to-gederys, an caste þer-to Safroun an Salt; […] 1430, Thomas Austin, editor, Two Fifteenth-century Cookery-books. Harleian ms. 279 (ab. 1430), & Harl. ms. 4016 (ab. 1450), with Extracts from Ashmole ms. 1429, Laud ms. 553, & Douce ms. 55 (Early English Text Society, Original Series; 91), volume 1, London: Routledge; N. Trübner & Co., published 1888, →OCLC, page 11:
Nando was pierced with grief, but he didn't allow himself to cry. Tears, he knew, would cost his body salt. Without salt, you die. 2013, Bear Grylls, True Grit: the Epic True Stories of Heroism and Survival That Have Shaped My Life, →ISBN, page 9:
Here’s a grocery list of foods Chestnut has eaten competitively, drawn from his Major League Eating bio: apple pie, asparagus, boysenberry pie, brats, burritos, chicken spiedies (a kind of sandwich), chicken wings, chili, corned beef sandwiches, eggs, fish tacos, funnel cake, grilled cheese sandwiches, gyoza, Krystal hamburgers, horseshoe sandwiches, hot dogs, ice cream, jalapeno poppers, kolaches, pastrami sandwiches, Philly cheesesteaks, pierogi, pizza, pork ribs, pulled pork, poutine, salt potatoes, shrimp, tacos, tamales, turkey and Twinkies. 2015 July 2, Michael Pearson, “6 things to know about hot dog king Joey Chestnut”, in CNN:
Common salt, chloride of sodium, appears to be essential to the life of the higher animals. 1880, Arthur Herbert Church, Food: Some Account of Its Sources, Constituents and Uses, London: Chapman and Hall, page 24:
(countable, uncountable) One of the compounds formed from the reaction of an acid with a base, where a positive ion replaces a hydrogen of the acid.
(countable, uncommon) A salt marsh, a saline marsh at the shore of a sea.
(countable, slang) A sailor (also old salt).
I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 1”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
Around the door are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts. 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter:
(countable, uncountable) A sequence of random data added to plain text data (such as passwords or messages) prior to encryption or hashing, in order to make brute force decryption more difficult.
(countable, uncountable) A person who seeks employment at a company in order to (once employed by it) help unionize it.
Though we are justices and doctors and churchmen […] we have some salt of our youth in us. c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]:
(obsolete, uncountable) Piquancy; wit; sense.
Attic salt
(countable, obsolete) A dish for salt at table; a salt cellar.
I out and bought some things; among others, a dozen of silver salts. 1664 September 18 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “September 9th, 1664”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume IV, London: George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1894, →OCLC:
(countable, historical, in-plural, uncountable) Epsom salts or other salt used as a medicine.
(figuratively, uncountable) Skepticism and common sense.
Any politician's statements must be taken with a grain of salt, but his need to be taken with a whole shaker of salt.
PIE word
*sḗh₂l
From Middle English salt, from Old English sealt, from Proto-West Germanic *salt, from Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *sḗh₂l (“salt”). Doublet of sal, salary, and salsa, all ultimately from Latin sāl (“salt”), which it superseded as the general term for "salt".
Cognate with Dutch zout, German Salz, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish salt.
Meanings
(transitive) To add salt to.
to salt fish, beef, or pork; to salt the city streets in the winter
(intransitive) To deposit salt as a saline solution.
The brine begins to salt.
(of a ship) To fill with salt between the timbers and planks for the preservation of the timber.
To insert or inject something into an object to give it properties it would not naturally have. ▸ To blast metal into (as a portion of a mine) in order to cause to appear to be a productive seam.
To insert or inject something into an object to give it properties it would not naturally have. ▸ To add bogus evidence to an archaeological site.
(transitive) To insert or inject something into an object to give it properties it would not naturally have. ▸ To add certain chemical elements to (a nuclear or conventional weapon) so that it generates more radiation.
The composition of the fallout can also be changed by "salting" the weapon to be detonated. This consists in the inclusion of significant quantities of certain elements, possibly enriched in specific isotopes, for the purpose of producing induced radioactivity. There are several reasons why a weapon might be salted. 1964, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, page 417:
(transitive) To sprinkle throughout.
The Libertarians wish we had won the Vietnamese War, they would like to revoke civil rights legislation, they believe (even though they are supposedly anti-state) in a stronger Pentagon. They are salted with Nixonites, Young Americans for Freedom, John Birchers, Reaganites — in other words the old Joe McCarthy gang again. I thought they had left us, or reformed, or taken up knitting. 1976 December 11, Ronnie Allen, “No Political Eunuch”, in Gay Community News, volume 4, number 24, page 4:
These were pamphlets, often written in various Jewish vernaculars, describing the location of the Holy sites and salting the accounts with mythic and homiletical materials. 1993, The Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy, page 154:
They salted the document with arcane language.
To add filler bytes before encrypting, in order to make brute-force decryption more resource-intensive.
(transitive) To render a thing useless. ▸ To sow with salt (of land), symbolizing a curse on its re-inhabitation.
In this place were put to the ground and salted the houses of José Mascarenhas.
(qualifier:wiki jargon) To render a thing useless. ▸ To lock a page title so it cannot be created.
To seek employment at a company in order to help unionize it.
And then there was a different faction of organizers who you call more like “professional activists” or “white leftists,” and they were maybe more privileged, maybe just joined the job to salt for the union. 2026 June 2, Alex Skopic, Chris Smalls, “Chris Smalls Is Still Fighting the Bosses”, in Current Affairs:
pl posolić (to add salt to) · izh soolata (to add salt to) · ka დამარილება (to add salt to) · ang sieltan (to add salt to) · et soolama (to add salt to) · pms salé (to add salt to) · nl zouten (to add salt to) · mk соли (to add salt to) · sc salire (to add salt to) · oc salar (to add salt to) · fr saler (to add salt to) · lt pasūdyti (to add salt to) · lt sūdyti (to add salt to) · fi suolata (to add salt to) · fi terästää (to add something into an object) · ta உப்பிடு (to add salt to) · gl salgar (to add salt to) · mi whakatote (to add salt to) · cy dodi halen ar (to add salt to) · be салі́ць (to add salt to) · rm salar (to add salt to) · no salte (to add salt to) · gl salpresar (to add salt to) · cs osolit (to add salt to) · mk засоли (to add salt to) · rm ensalar (to add salt to) · nl kleuren (to include colorful language) · ca salar (to add salt to) · ta உப்பு சேர் (to add salt to) · fur salâ (to add salt to) · io salizar (to add salt to) · da krydre (to include colorful language) · he המליח (to add salt to) · ja 塩漬けにする (to add salt to) · yi זאַלצן (to add salt to) · da salte (to add salt to) · grc ἁλίζω (to add salt to) · pt salgar (to add salt to) · is salta (to add salt to) · es salar (to add salt to) · rup ãnsar (to add salt to) · pl solić (to add salt to) · de sålzn (to add salt to) · be пасалі́ць (to add salt to) · yue 落鹽 /落盐 (to add salt to) · rup nsar (to add salt to) · zza solnaene (to add salt to) · eo sali (to add salt to) · rm ansalar (to add salt to) · fi maustaa (to include colorful language) · ro săra (to add salt to) · sl soliti (to add salt to) · fo salta (to add salt to) · de salzen (to add salt to) · la salio (to add salt to) · sw chumvi (to add filler bytes before encryption) · hu sóz (to add salt to) · nrf saler (to add salt to) · ga cuir salann ar (to add salt to) · az duzlamaq (to add salt to) · ar مَلَّحَ (to add salt to) · sv salta (to add salt to) · cy halltu (to add salt to) · rm saler (to add salt to) · ga saill (to add salt to) · de soizn (to add salt to) · it salare (to add salt to) · ru посоли́ть (to add salt to) · ru соли́ть (to add salt to) · sc saliri (to add salt to) · sv krydda (to include colorful language) · tr tuzlamak (to add salt to) · ky туздоо (to add salt to) · yue 加鹽 /加盐 (to add salt to) · mi tote (to add salt to) · fi suolata (to add filler bytes before encryption) · fi höystää (to include colorful language) · fr épicer (to include colorful language) · sw chumvi (to add salt to) · pap sala (to add salt to) · scn salari (to add salt to) · cs solit (to add salt to) · el αλατίζω (to add salt to) · lv sālīt (to add salt to) · kk тұздау (to add salt to) · gd saill (to add salt to) · bg соля (to add salt to) · mk посоли (to add salt to) · rm insaler (to add salt to)
salt en · NOUN · etymology 2
Etymology
Etymology tree
Latin saliō
Proto-Indo-European *-tus
Proto-Italic *-tus
Latin -tus
Latin saltusbor.
English salt
Borrowed from Latin saltus.
Meanings
(obsolete) A bounding; a leaping; a prance.
[…] he hath the skill to draw
Their nectar forth, with kissing; and could make
More wanton salts from this brave promontory,
Down to this valley, than the nimble roe; 1616, Ben Jonson, The Devil Is an Ass, in Gifford’s 1816 edition volume V page 67