salt
Part of speech: noun
adj
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: archaeology
business
chemistry
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government
history
human-sciences
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mining
natural-sciences
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physical-sciences
politics
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transport
war
Etymology: 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 Doublet of sal, salary, and salsa, all ultimately from Latin sāl (“salt”), which it superseded as the general term for "salt".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.
Inflected forms:
form: salts
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: more salt
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most salt
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: salts
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: salting
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: salted
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: salted
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A common substance, chemically consisting mainly of sodium chloride (NaCl), used extensively as a food ingredient, seasoning, condiment, and preservative.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: 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; […]
Common salt, chloride of sodium, appears to be essential to the life of the higher animals.
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.
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.
gloss: One of the compounds formed from the reaction of an acid with a base, where a positive ion replaces a hydrogen of the acid.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A salt marsh, a saline marsh at the shore of a sea.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncommon
gloss: A sailor (also old salt).
pos: noun
tags: countable
slang
examples: Around the door are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts.
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.
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A person who seeks employment at a company in order to (once employed by it) help unionize it.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: Flavour; taste; seasoning.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
uncountable
examples: Though we are justices and doctors and churchmen […] we have some salt of our youth in us.
gloss: Piquancy; wit; sense.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
uncountable
examples: Attic salt
gloss: A dish for salt at table; a salt cellar.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
examples: I out and bought some things; among others, a dozen of silver salts.
gloss: Epsom salts or other salt used as a medicine.
pos: noun
tags: countable
historical
in-plural
uncountable
gloss: Skepticism and common sense.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
uncountable
examples: Any politician's statements must be taken with a grain of salt, but his need to be taken with a whole shaker of salt.
gloss: Tears; indignation; outrage; arguing.
pos: noun
tags: Internet
uncountable
examples: There was so much salt in that thread about the poor casting decision.
gloss: The money demanded by Eton schoolboys during the montem.
pos: noun
tags: UK
historical
uncountable
gloss: Of water: containing salt, saline.
pos: adj
examples: Why the Sea is Salt
After a few days of north-west wind, the waters of the Gordon will be found salt for twelve miles up from the bar.
gloss: Treated with salt as a preservative; cured with salt, salted.
pos: adj
examples: salt beef
Philander went into the next room[…]and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm.
gloss: Of land, fields etc.: flooded by the sea.
pos: adj
examples: a salt marsh
gloss: Of plants: growing in the sea or on land flooded by the sea.
pos: adj
examples: salt grass
gloss: Related to salt deposits, excavation, processing or use.
pos: adj
examples: a salt mine
The salt factory is a key connecting element in the seawater infrastructure.
gloss: Bitter; sharp; pungent.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
obsolete
examples: I have a salt and sorry rheum offends me […].
gloss: Salacious; lecherous; lustful; (of animals) in heat.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
obsolete
examples: 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.
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 […]
gloss: Costly; expensive.
pos: adj
tags: archaic
colloquial
gloss: To add salt to.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: to salt fish, beef, or pork; to salt the city streets in the winter
gloss: To deposit salt as a saline solution.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: The brine begins to salt.
gloss: To fill with salt between the timbers and planks for the preservation of the timber.
pos: verb
gloss: To insert or inject something into an object to give it properties it would not naturally have.
pos: verb
gloss: To insert or inject something into an object to give it properties it would not naturally have.
pos: verb
gloss: To insert or inject something into an object to give it properties it would not naturally have.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: 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.
gloss: To sprinkle throughout.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: They salted the document with arcane language.
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.
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.
gloss: To add filler bytes before encrypting, in order to make brute-force decryption more resource-intensive.
pos: verb
gloss: To render a thing useless.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: In this place were put to the ground and salted the houses of José Mascarenhas.
gloss: To render a thing useless.
pos: verb
Synonyms: sal
Antonyms: desalt
Related words: salary
salad
Derived words: add salt to injury
antisalt
besalted
bisalt
black salt
blacksalter
bread and salt
cerebral salt-wasting syndrome
hydrosalt
kitchen salt
lay salt on someone's tail
nonsalt
oversalt
oxysalt
pepper and salt
persalt
polysalt
protosalt
resalt
salt and chilli chips
salt and pepper chips
saltbox
saltbush
saltcat
salt cave
Salt Coates
salt coffee
salt daddy
saltery
saltfish
saltfoot
Saltford
saltfree
salt-free
saltgrass
salthouse
saltie
saltine
saltish
salt lamp
saltland
saltless
saltlike
saltly
saltmaker
saltmaking
salt marsh elder
saltmonger
saltmouth
salt myrtle
salt-myrtle
salt of wisdom
saltometer
saltproof
salt stick
saltstone
salt tectonics
salt water aspiration syndrome
saltweed
saltwork
saltworker
saltworks
saltwort
salty
sesquisalt
subsalt
sulfosalt
sulphosalt
supersalt
take bread and salt
unsalt
desalt
above the salt
acid of salt
amphid salt
Attic salt
baker's salt
bath salt
bay salt
below the salt
bile salt
bronzing salt
butter salt
cat-salt
celery salt
chicken salt
common salt
covenant of salt
diazonium salt
dishwasher salt
double salt
dry-salt
Epsom salt(s)
essential salt
flake salt
Frémy's salt
fruit salt
garlic salt
Glaser's salt
Glauber's salt
Great Salt Lake
green salt
green salt of Magnus
hair-salt
hair salt
hartshorn salt
hei hei salt
Himalayan salt
horse salt
inner salt
koshering salt
kosher salt
Magnus' green salt
Meerwein's salt
microcosmic salt
mineral salt
mixed salt
Monsel's salt
not worth salt
organic salt
pepper-and-salt
pinch of salt
pink salt
please pass the salt
polychrest salt
pound salt
pre-salt layer
prunella salt
put salt on someone's tail
road salt
Rochelle salt
rock salt
rub salt in someone's wounds
rub salt in the wound
salt acid
salt and pepper
salt-and-pepper
salt-and-pepper doris
salt beef
salt bottom
salt box
salt bridge
salt cake
salt cedar
saltcellar
salt-cellar
salt chuck
salt clay
salt cod
Salt Creek
salt dome
salt dough
salt-effect distillation
salt flat
salt garden
salt glacier
salt gland
salt glaze
salt grass
salt-green
salt hay
Salt Hill
salt horse
salt in the wound
salt junk
salt lake → Salt Lake City
Salt Lake County
salt lick
salt line
salt marsh
salt-marsh caterpillar
salt marsh hay
salt-marsh terrapin
salt meat
salt mine
salt of amber
salt of colcothar
salt of hartshorn
salt of lemon
salt of Saturn
salt of soda
salt of sorrel
salt of tartar
salt of the earth
salt of tin
salt of Venus
salt of vitriol
salt of wormwood
salt out
salt pan
salt pig
salt pork
salt rheum
salt-rising bread
Salt River
salt sea
Salt Sea
salt sedative
salt shaker
salt spoon
saltspoon
salt spray test
salt substitute
salt the mine
salt tree
salt truck
salt water
salt-water
saltwater
salt water taffy
salt wedge
salt works
Schlippe's salt
sea salt
sedative salt
sell salt to a slug
smelling salt
spirit of salt
spirits of salt
sulfur salt
sulphur salt
syntactic salt
table salt
take with a pinch of salt
throw salt
Tutton's salt
white salt
with all the salt in the Dead Sea
worth one's salt
worth one's weight in salt
saltness
salt spray
salt away
salt down
salt the earth
salt up
undersalt
Translations:
lang: Finnish
word: terästää
lang: Danish
word: krydre
lang: Dutch
word: kleuren
lang: Finnish
word: maustaa
lang: Finnish
word: höystää
lang: French
word: épicer
lang: Swedish
word: krydda