salt

Etymology 1

From Middle English salt, from Old English sealt, from Proto-West Germanic *salt, from Proto-Germanic *saltą, from Proto-Indo-European *séh₂ls (“salt”). Doublet of sal, ultimately from Latin sāl (“salt”), which it superseded as the general term for "salt".

noun

1. A common substance, chemically consisting mainly of sodium chloride (NaCl), used extensively as a condiment and preservative.
   Soupes dorye. — Take gode almaunde mylke […] caste þher-to Safroun an Salt […] c. 1430 (reprinted 1888), Thomas Austin, ed., 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], London: N. Trübner & Co. for the Early English Text Society, volume I, OCLC 374760, page 11
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).
   Around the door are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts. 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
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.
8. (obsolete) Piquancy; wit; sense.
   Attic salt
9. (obsolete) A dish for salt at table; a salt cellar.
10. (historical, in the plural) Epsom salts or other salt used as a medicine.
11. (figurative) 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.
12. (Internet slang) Tears; indignation; outrage; arguing.
    There was so much salt in that thread about the poor casting decision.
13. (UK, historical) The money demanded by Eton schoolboys during the montem.
14. One who joins a workplace for the purpose of unionizing it.

adj

1. Salty; salted.
   salt beef; salt tears
   Philander went into the next room[…]and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack. 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 8, in Mr. Pratt's Patients
2. Saline.
   a salt marsh; salt grass
3. Related to salt deposits, excavation, processing or use.
   a salt mine
   The salt factory is a key connecting element in the seawater infrastructure.
4. (figurative, obsolete) Bitter; sharp; pungent.
5. (figurative, obsolete) Salacious; lecherous; lustful; (of animals) in heat.
   (translator), The First Book of the works of Mr. Francis Rabelais, 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 […]
6. (colloquial, archaic) Costly; expensive.

verb

1. (transitive) To add salt to.
   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.
      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.
   They salted the document with arcane language.
   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.
      In this place were put to the ground and salted the houses of José Mascarenhas.
   2. (wiki) To lock a page title so it cannot be created.

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Latin saltus.

noun

1. (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