Definition of "salt"

salt¹

/sɒlt/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural salts
1. A common substance, chemically consisting mainly of sodium chloride (NaCl), used extensively as a condiment and preservative.
  Quotations
  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; […]
  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, page 11
  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
  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, page 9
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.
3. (uncommon) A salt marsh, a saline marsh at the shore of a sea.
4. (slang) A sailor (also old salt).
  Quotations
  Around the door are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts.
  1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
  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
5. (cryptography) Randomly chosen bytes added to a plaintext message prior to encrypting or hashing it, in order to render 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. (obsolete) Flavour; taste; seasoning.
  Quotations
  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, [Act II, scene iii]
8. (obsolete) Piquancy; wit; sense.
9. (obsolete) A dish for salt at table; a salt cellar.
  Quotations
  I out and bought some things; among others, a dozen of silver salts.
  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
10. (historical, in the plural) Epsom salts or other salt used as a medicine.
11. (figurative) Skepticism and common sense.
12. (Internet slang) Tears; indignation; outrage; arguing.
13. (UK, historical) The money demanded by Eton schoolboys during the montem.
14. One who joins a workplace for the purpose of unionizing it.
adjective
comparative more salt, superlative most salt
1. Of water: containing salt, saline.
  Quotations
  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
2. Treated with salt as a preservative; cured with salt, salted.
  Quotations
  Philander went into the next room […] and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm.
  1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 8, in Mr. Pratt's Patients
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. (figurative, obsolete) Bitter; sharp; pungent.
  Quotations
  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, [Act III, scene iv]
7. (figurative, obsolete) Salacious; lecherous; lustful; (of animals) in heat.
  Quotations
  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, [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
8. (colloquial, archaic) Costly; expensive.
verb
third-person singular simple present salts, present participle salting, simple past and past participle salted
1. (transitive) To add salt to.
2. (intransitive) To deposit salt as a saline solution.
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.
    Quotations
    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
5. (transitive) To sprinkle throughout.
  Quotations
  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
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.
  2. (wiki) To lock a page title so it cannot be created.

salt²

noun
plural salts
1. (obsolete) A bounding; a leaping; a prance.
  Quotations
  […] he hath the skill to drawTheir nectar forth, with kissing; and could makeMore 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

Definition of "salt"

salt1

noun

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

adjective

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

verb

Quotations

Quotations

salt2

noun

Quotations

salt¹

salt²