English Explanatory Dictionary

salt

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A common substance, chemically consisting mainly of sodium chloride (NaCl), used extensively as a food ingredient, seasoning, condiment, and preservative.
  2. One of the compounds formed from the reaction of an acid with a base, where a positive ion replaces a hydrogen of the acid.
  3. A salt marsh, a saline marsh at the shore of a sea.
  4. A sailor (also old salt).
  5. 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.
  6. A person who seeks employment at a company in order to (once employed by it) help unionize it.
  7. Flavour; taste; seasoning.
  8. Piquancy; wit; sense.
  9. A dish for salt at table; a salt cellar.
  10. Epsom salts or other salt used as a medicine.
  11. Skepticism and common sense.
  12. Tears; indignation; outrage; arguing.
adj
  1. Of water: containing salt, saline.
  2. Treated with salt as a preservative; cured with salt, salted.
  3. Of land, fields etc.: flooded by the sea.
  4. Of plants: growing in the sea or on land flooded by the sea.
  5. Related to salt deposits, excavation, processing or use.
  6. Bitter; sharp; pungent.
  7. Salacious; lecherous; lustful; (of animals) in heat.
  8. Costly; expensive.
verb
  1. To add salt to.
  2. To deposit salt as a saline solution.
  3. 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.
  5. To blast metal into (as a portion of a mine) in order to cause to appear to be a productive seam.
  6. To add bogus evidence to an archaeological site.
  7. To add certain chemical elements to (a nuclear or conventional weapon) so that it generates more radiation.
  8. To sprinkle throughout.
  9. To add filler bytes before encrypting, in order to make brute-force decryption more resource-intensive.
  10. To render a thing useless.
  11. To sow with salt (of land), symbolizing a curse on its re-inhabitation.
  12. To lock a page title so it cannot be created.
noun
  1. A bounding; a leaping; a prance.
name
  1. Acronym of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.
noun
  1. Acronym of state and local tax(es) [deduction], a tax deduction whereby some portion of the money paid as taxes to state and local governments is not taxed at the federal level; the tax-deductible portion is nominally capped, but the cap is circumventable via special-interest loopholes.
  2. Acronym of speech and language therapist.
  3. Acronym of speech and language therapy.
name
  1. A village in Salt and Enson parish, Stafford borough, Staffordshire, England (OS grid ref SJ9527).
  2. A surname.

Pronunciation

sŏlt sôlt /sɒlt/ /sɔːlt/ En-uk-salt.ogg LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-salt.wav /sɔlt/ sält /sɑlt/ [sɑɫt] [sɑɫʔ] en-us-salt.ogg [sɔɯ̯t]

Word forms

salt salts more salt most salt salting salted

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.

Synonyms

sal common salt table salt rock salt road salt salt down

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

Translations

Finnish: terästää Finnish: maustaa Finnish: höystää Danish: krydre Dutch: kleuren French: épicer Swedish: krydda
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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