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 Doublet of sal, salary, and salsa, all ultimately from Latin sāl (“salt”), which it superseded as the general term for "salt".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.

• (UK) enPR: sŏlt, sôlt, IPA^(key): /sɒlt/, /sɔːlt/

  • Audio (UK); /sɔːlt/:

    (file)

  • Audio (UK); /sɔːlt/:

    (file)

• (US, no cot-caught merger) enPR: sôlt IPA^(key): /sɔlt/
• (US, Canada, cot–caught merger) enPR: sält, IPA^(key): /sɑlt/, [sɑɫt], [sɑɫʔ]

  • Audio (US, cot-caught merger):

    (file)

• (New Zealand) enPR: sŏlt, IPA^(key): /sɔlt/, [sɔɯ̯t]
• Rhymes: -ɒlt, -ɔːlt

salt (countable and uncountable, plural salts)

2. A common substance, chemically consisting mainly of sodium chloride (NaCl), used extensively as a food ingredient, seasoning, condiment, and preservative.

   Synonym: common salt

   Near-synonyms: table salt, rock salt, road 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:

     Take gode almaunde mylke y-draw wyth wyn, an let hem boyle to-gederys, an caste þer-to Safroun an Salt; […]

     Take good almond milk made with wine, and let it boil together, and add thereto Saffron and Salt; […]

   • 1880, Arthur Herbert Church, Food: Some Account of Its Sources, Constituents and Uses‎^[1], London: Chapman and Hall, page 24:

     Common salt, chloride of sodium, appears to be essential to the life of the higher animals.

   • 2013, Bear Grylls, True Grit: the Epic True Stories of Heroism and Survival That Have Shaped My Life, →ISBN, page 9:

     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.

   • 2015 July 2, Michael Pearson, “6 things to know about hot dog king Joey Chestnut”, in CNN‎^[2]:

     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.

4. (chemistry) One of the compounds formed from the reaction of an acid with a base, where a positive ion replaces a hydrogen of the acid.
5. (uncommon, countable) A salt marsh, a saline marsh at the shore of a sea.
6. (slang, countable) A sailor (also old salt).
   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter:

     Around the door are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts.

   • 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:

     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.

7. (cryptography) 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.
8. A person who seeks employment at a company in order to (once employed by it) help unionize it.
9. (obsolete, uncountable) Flavour; taste; seasoning.
   • 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]:

     Though we are justices and doctors and churchmen […] we have some salt of our youth in us.

10. (obsolete, uncountable) Piquancy; wit; sense.

    Attic salt

11. (obsolete, countable) A dish for salt at table; a salt cellar.
    • 1664 September 19 (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:

      I out and bought some things; among others, a dozen of silver salts.

12. (historical, in the plural) Epsom salts or other salt used as a medicine.
13. (figurative, 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.

15. (Internet slang, uncountable) Tears; indignation; outrage; arguing.

    There was so much salt in that thread about the poor casting decision.

16. (UK, historical, uncountable) The money demanded by Eton schoolboys during the montem.

• sal (obsolete)

• salary
• salad

• Bislama: sol
• Tok Pisin: sol
• Māori: tote

salt (comparative more salt, superlative most salt)

1. Of water: containing salt, saline.

   Why the Sea is Salt

   • 1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 97:

     After a few days of north-west wind, the waters of the Gordon will be found salt for twelve miles up from the bar.

2. Treated with salt as a preservative; cured with salt, salted.

   salt beef

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     Philander went into the next room […] and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm.

3. Of land, fields etc.: flooded by the sea.

   a salt marsh

4. Of plants: growing in the sea or on land flooded by the sea.

   salt grass

5. Related to salt deposits, excavation, processing or use.

   a salt mine

   The salt factory is a key connecting element in the seawater infrastructure.

6. (figurative, obsolete) Bitter; sharp; pungent.
   • 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]:

     I have a salt and sorry rheum offends me […] .

7. (figurative, obsolete) Salacious; lecherous; lustful; (of animals) in heat.
   • 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]:

     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.

   • 1653, Thomas Urquhart, transl., The First Book of the works of Mr. Francis Rabelais‎^[3], Book 2, Chapter 22, p. 153:

     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 […]

8. (colloquial, archaic) Costly; expensive.

• saltness
• salt spray

salt (third-person singular simple present salts, present participle salting, simple past and past participle salted)

1. (transitive) To add salt to.

   Synonym: salt down

   to salt fish, beef, or pork; to salt the city streets in the winter

2. (intransitive) To deposit salt as a saline solution.

   The brine begins to salt.

3. (nautical, of a ship) To fill with salt between the timbers and planks for the preservation of the timber.
4. To insert or inject something into an object to give it properties it would not naturally have.
   1. (mining) To blast metal into (as a portion of a mine) in order to cause to appear to be a productive seam.
   2. (archaeology) To add bogus evidence to an archaeological site.
   3. (transitive) To add certain chemical elements to (a nuclear or conventional weapon) so that it generates more radiation.
      • 1964, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, page 417:

        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.

5. (transitive) To sprinkle throughout.

   They salted the document with arcane language.

   • 1976 December 11, Ronnie Allen, “No Political Eunuch”, in Gay Community News, volume 4, number 24, page 4:

     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.

   • 1993, The Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy, page 154:

     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.

6. (cryptography) To add filler bytes before encrypting, in order to make brute-force decryption more resource-intensive.
7. To render a thing useless.
   1. (military, transitive) 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.

   2. (wiki jargon) To lock a page title so it cannot be created.

• (antonym(s) of “add salt”): desalt

Borrowed from Latin saltus.

salt (plural salts)

1. (obsolete) A bounding; a leaping; a prance.
   • 1616, Ben Jonson, The Devil Is an Ass, in Gifford’s 1816 edition volume V page 67

     […] 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;

• Alts, LTAs, TLAs, alts, last, lats, slat

Compare Turkish salt.

salt

1. (Dmanisi) single, sole, the only

   Synonyms: tək, tənha

Inherited from Old Catalan salt, from Latin saltus.

• IPA^(key): (Central) [ˈsal]
• IPA^(key): (Balearic, Valencia) [ˈsalt]

• Audio (Catalonia):

  (file)

salt m (plural salts)

1. jump
2. waterfall

• salt de perxa
• saltiró

• saltar

• Alcover, Antoni Maria; Moll, Francesc de Borja (1963), “salt”, in Diccionari català-valencià-balear (in Catalan)
• Alcover, Antoni Maria; Moll, Francesc de Borja (1963), “salt”, in Diccionari català-valencià-balear (in Catalan)

From Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *seh₂l-.

salt

1. salt
   • 1562, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq:

     Salt. Sal.

salt

1. genitive plural of salto

From Old Norse saltr (“salt”)

• IPA^(key): /salˀd/, [sælˀd̥], [sælˀt]

salt (plural and definite singular attributive salte)

1. salty, salt

Basic tastes in Danish (layout · text)
sød	sur	salt	bitter	stærk	umami

From Old Norse salt (akin to Old Saxon salt, Old High German salz, Old Dutch salt, Old English sealt), from Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂l-, *sḗh₂l. Compare Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish salt.

• IPA^(key): /salˀt/, [sæ̝lˀt]

salt n (singular definite saltet, plural indefinite salte)

1. salt

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

salt

1. imperative of salte

• salte
• mineralsalt

• IPA^(key): [sal̥t]

From Old Norse salt, from Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂l-, *sḗh₂l, *sáls.

salt n (genitive singular salts, plural sølt)

1. salt

From Old Norse saltr (“salt”), from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂l-, *sḗh₂l, *sáls.

salt

1. salty

From Latin saltus.

salt m (plural salts)

1. jump, leap, spring

• saltâ

salt

1. romanization of 𐍃𐌰𐌻𐍄

From Old Norse salt, from Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂l-, *sḗh₂l, *sáls.

• IPA^(key): /sal̥t/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -al̥t

salt n (genitive singular salts, nominative plural sölt)

1. salt

   Geturðu rétt mér saltið?

   Can you pass me the salt?

• salta
• saltstaukur
• saltsýra
• vega salt

salt

1. positive degree neuter singular nominative/accusative of saltur

From Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- (“cold; hot”). Cognates include Lithuanian šálti.

salt (intransitive, 1st conjugation, present salstu, salsti, salst, past salu)

1. to freeze

• salte, scealte, selt, sealt, saulte, sawt, zalt

From Old English sealt, from Proto-West Germanic *salt, from Proto-Germanic *saltą (noun) and Proto-Germanic *saltaz (adjective).

• IPA^(key): /salt/
• (Southern, Kent) IPA^(key): /zalt/, /zɛlt/
• (late) IPA^(key): /sau̯lt/

salt (uncountable)

1. salt (sodium chloride)
2. Something containing or for storing salt
3. Any of a group of crystalline compounds that resemble salt

• salten
• salthous

• English: salt
• Scots: sawt, salt, saut
• Yola: zall, zalt

• “salt, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 8 April 2018.

salt (plural and weak singular salte, comparative salter, superlative saltest)

1. salty, tasting of salt
2. salted, coated in salt

• English: salt
• Scots: sawt, salt, saut

• “salt, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 8 April 2018.

• IPA^(key): /sɑlt/

From Old Norse saltr.

salt (neuter singular salt, definite singular and plural salte, comparative saltere, indefinite superlative saltest, definite superlative salteste)

1. salty, salt, salted

   salte peanøtter ― salted peanuts

From Old Norse salt (akin to Old Saxon salt, Old High German salz, Old Dutch salt, Old English sealt), from Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂l-, *sḗh₂l. Compare Danish, Swedish and Icelandic salt.

salt n (definite singular saltet, indefinite plural salter, definite plural salta or saltene)

1. salt

salt

1. imperative of salte

• “salt” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

• IPA^(key): /sɑlt/

From Old Norse saltr.

salt (neuter singular salt, definite singular and plural salte, comparative saltare, indefinite superlative saltast, definite superlative saltaste)

1. salty, salt, salted

From Old Norse salt (akin to Old Saxon salt, Old High German salz, Old Dutch salt, Old English sealt), from Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂l-, *sḗh₂l.

salt n (definite singular saltet, indefinite plural salt, definite plural salta)

1. salt

• “salt” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

From Old Norse salt.

salt n

1. salt

• Danish: salt

From Old Norse saltr.

salt

1. salty, salt

• Danish: salt

From Proto-West Germanic *salt (“salt”)

salt n

1. salt

• North Frisian:

  Föhr-Amrum: saalt

  Mooring: sålt

  Sylt: Saalt

• Saterland Frisian: Soalt, Saalt (Skäddel, Strukelje)
• West Frisian: sâlt

salt

1. salty, salted

• West Frisian: sâlt

From Proto-Germanic *saltą.

salt n

1. salt

• salta (“to salt”)
• saltr (“salty”)

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

salt

1. strong neuter nominative/accusative singular of saltr (“salty”)

• Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), “salt”, in A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press; also available at the Internet Archive

From Old Norse salt.

salt n

1. salt

• Swedish: salt c

Inherited from Latin saltus.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsalt/

salt n (plural salturi)

1. leap
2. saltation

salt

1. first-person singular present indicative/subjunctive of sălta

• IPA^(key): /salt/

• Audio:

  (file)

From Old Swedish salter, from Old Norse saltr, from Proto-Germanic *saltaz, from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂l-, *sḗh₂l, *sáls.

salt (comparative saltare, superlative saltast)

1. salty

   Antonym: (of water) söt

   Soppan är för salt

   The soup is too salty

From Old Swedish salt, from Old Norse salt (akin to Old Saxon salt, Old High German salz, Old Dutch salt, Old English sealt), from Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂l-, *sḗh₂l. Compare Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian salt.

salt n

1. salt
   1. (uncountable) sodium chloride (NaCl), used extensively as a condiment and preservative.

      Synonyms: koksalt, (table salt) bordssalt

      salt och peppar

      salt and pepper

   2. (chemistry) One of the compounds formed from the reaction of an acid with a base, where a positive ion replaces a hydrogen of the acid.

• salta
• sälta

• “salt”, in Svensk ordbok [Dictionary of Swedish] (in Swedish)
• “salt”, in Svenska Akademiens ordlista [Wordlist of the Swedish Academy] (in Swedish)
• “salt”, in Svenska Akademiens ordbok [Dictionary of the Swedish Academy] (in Swedish)

• last, lats, stal, tals

Semantic loan from English as in, via an unadapted borrowing from English salt, which is a calque of Tagalog asin, due to homophony with English as in.

• (Standard Tagalog) IPA^(key): /ˈsolt/ [ˈsolt̪]
• Rhymes: -olt
• Syllabification: salt

salt (Baybayin spelling ᜐᜓᜎ᜔ᜆ᜔) (slang, dated)

1. mild intensifier: literally

   Ang init ng araw, salt pare!

   The sun is so hot, as in [HOT] bro!

• Usually used by younger generations, such as millennials and Gen Z, belonging to upper social classes, such as those proficient in both Taglish and Conyo, especially around Metro Manila.

From Proto-Turkic *sal- (“to unleash”).

• IPA^(key): /saɫt/

salt

1. exclusively, only, just, absolute

   salt çoğunluk

   absolute majority

• bir
• sadece
• sırf
• tek
• yalnız
• (absolute) mutlak

• salmak

• → Armenian: սալթ (saltʻ)

• “salt”, in Turkish dictionaries, Türk Dil Kurumu