salt

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A colorless or white crystalline solid, chiefly sodium chloride, used extensively in ground or granulated form as a food seasoning and preservative. Also called common salt, table salt.
2. n. A chemical compound formed by replacing all or part of the hydrogen ions of an acid with metal ions or electropositive radicals.
3. n. Any of various mineral salts used as laxatives or cathartics.
4. n. Smelling salts.
5. n. Epsom salts. Often used in the plural.
6. n. An element that gives flavor or zest.
7. n. Sharp lively wit.
8. n. Informal A sailor, especially when old or experienced.
9. n. A saltcellar.
10. adj. Containing or filled with salt: a salt spray; salt tears.
11. adj. Having a salty taste or smell: breathed the salt air.
12. adj. Preserved in salt or a salt solution: salt mackerel.
13. adj. Flooded with seawater.
14. adj. Found in or near such a flooded area: salt grasses.
15. v. To add, treat, season, or sprinkle with salt.
16. v. To cure or preserve by treating with salt or a salt solution.
17. v. To provide salt for (deer or cattle).
18. v. To add zest or liveliness to: salt a lecture with anecdotes.
19. v. To give an appearance of value to by fraudulent means, especially to place valuable minerals in (a mine) for the purpose of deceiving.
20. salt away To put aside; save.
21. salt out To separate (a dissolved substance) by adding salt to the solution.
22. idiom. salt of the earth A person or group considered as the best or noblest part of society.
23. idiom. worth (one's) salt Efficient and capable.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A compound (NaCl) of chlorin with the metallic base of the alkali soda, one of the most abundantly disseminated and important of all substances. It not only occurs in numerous localities in beds sometimes thousands of feet in thickness, but also exists in solution in the ocean, forming nearly three percent. by weight of its mass. It is not only of the greatest importance in connection with the business of chemical manufacturing, but is also an indispensable article of food, at least to all men not living exclusively on the products of the chase. Salt often occurs crystallized, in the isometric system, and has when crystalline a perfect cubic cleavage. Its specific gravity is about 2.2. When pure it is colorless. As it occurs in nature in the solid form, it is almost always mixed with some earthy impurities, besides containing more or less of the same salts with which it is associated in the water of the ocean (see ocean). It is not limited to any one geological formation, but occurs in great abundance in nearly all the stratified groups. The Great Salt Range of India is of Lower Silurian age; the principal supply of the United States comes from the Upper Silurian and Carboniferous; the most important salt-deposits of England, France, and Germany are in the Permian and Triassic; the most noted deposits of Spain are Cretaceous and Tertiary; and those of Poland and Transylvania are of Tertiary age. Salt is obtained from evaporation of the water of the ocean and of interior saline lakes; from the evaporation of the water rising naturally in saline springs or obtained by boring; by mining the solid material, or rock-salt. The supply of the United States is chiefly obtained by evaporating the water rising in holes made by boring. The principal salt-producing States are Michigan, New York, Ohio, Louisiana, West Virginia, Nevada, California, and Kansas; it is also produced in Utah. The two first-named States furnished in 1888 about three-quarters of the total product of the United States. The salt of California is made by the evaporation of sea-water; that of Utah from the water of Great Salt Lake; that of Louisiana and of Kansas, in part, is obtained by mining rock-salt. The product of the other States named comes chiefly from the evaporation of brine obtained by boring. Salt is of great importance as the material from which the alkali soda (carbonate of soda) is manufactured, and thus may be properly considered as forming the basis of several of the most economically important branches of chemical manufacture. Salt is also an article of great historical and ethnological importance. By many nations of antiquity it was regarded as having peculiar relations to mankind. Homer calls it “divine.” It has been and is still used as a measure of value.
2. n. In chem., any acid in which one or more atoms of hydrogen have been replaced with metallic atoms or basic radicals; any base in which the hydrogen atoms have been more or less replaced by non-metallic atoms or acid radicals; also, the product of the direct union of a metallic oxid and an anhydrid. The nomenclature of salts has reference to the acids from which they are derived. For example, sulphates, nitrates, carbonates, etc., imply salts of sulphuric, nitric, and carbonic acids. The termination -ate implies the maximum of oxygen in the acids, and -ite the minimum.
3. n. plural A salt (as Epsom salts, etc.) used as a medicine. See also smelling-salts.
4. n. A marshy place flooded by the tide.
5. n. A salt-cellar.
6. n. In heraldry, a bearing representing a high decorative salt-cellar, intended to resemble those used in the middle ages. In modern delineations this is merely a covered vase.
7. n. Seasoning; that which preserves a thing from corruption, or gives taste and pungency to it.
8. n. Taste; smack; savor; flavor.
9. n. Wit; piquancy; pungency; sarcasm: as, Attic salt (which see, under Attic).
10. n. Modification; hence, allowance; abatement; reserve: as, to take a thing with a grain of salt (see phrase below).
11. n. A bronzing material, the chlorid or butter of antimony, used in browning gun-barrels and other iron articles.
12. n. Lecherous desire.
13. n. A sailor, especially an experienced sailor.
14. Having the taste or pungency of salt; impregnated with, containing, or a bounding in salt: as, salt water.
15. Prepared or preserved with salt: as, salt beef; salt fish.
16. Overflowed with or growing in salt water: as, salt grass or hay.
17. Sharp; bitter; pungent.
18. Costly; dear; expensive: as, he paid a salt price for it.
19. Lecherous; salacious.
20. A game something like hide-and-seek.
21. To sprinkle, impregnate, or season with salt, or with a salt: as, to salt fish, beef, or pork.
22. To fill with salt between the timbers and planks, as a ship, for the preservation of the timber.
23. To furnish with salt; feed salt to: as, to salt cows.
24. In soap-making, to add salt to (the lye in the kettles) after saponification of the fatty ingredients, in order to separate the soap from the lye. The soap, being insoluble in the salted lye and of less specific gravity, rises to the top and fioats. This process is also called separation.
25. In photography, to impregnate (paper, canvas, or other tissue) with a salt or mixture of salts in solution, which, when treated with other solutions, form new compounds in the texture. Various bromides, iodides, and chlorids, being salts which effect the decomposition of nitrate of silver, are among those much used for this purpose.
26. To make, as a freshman, drink salt water, by way of initiation, according to a university custom of the sixteenth century.
27. To deposit salt, as a saline substance: as, the brine begins to salt.
28. n. See sault.
29. n. plural In glass manufacturing, same as glass-gall. See anatron, 1.
30. n. plural A name given to mixed saline masses obtained by evaporating the water of mineral springs, or by artificially mixing the saline constituents of such springs in the proportions indicated by analysis of the water: as, Karlsbad salts, Vichy salts, etc.
31. n. A salt which exhibits alkaline reaction or changes the red color of moist litmus-paper to blue, as does disodium orthophosphate.
32. n. An impure common salt from India, colored by admixture with tannate of iron. See bitnoben.
33. To enrich (a natural deposit) by artificial means, usually for the purpose of deceiving prospective purchasers. Thus a gold-mine is salted when powdered gold is shot into the rock with a gun; a sample is salted when metal, or rich ore, is mixed with it; a mineral spring is salted by the addition of salts; an oil-well by the addition of rich oils, etc.

Wiktionary

1. n. A common substance, chemically consisting mainly of sodium chloride (NaCl), used extensively as a condiment and preservative.
2. n. 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. n. A kind of marsh at the shore of a sea (short for salt marsh, apparently not in a wide-spread use).
4. n. slang A sailor (also old salt).
5. n. cryptography Additional bytes inserted into a plaintext message before encryption, in order to increase randomness and render brute-force decryption more difficult.
6. n. A person that engages in the political act of seeking employment at a company in order to help unionize it.
7. adj. Salty; salted.
8. adj. Saline.
9. v. transitive To add salt to.
10. v. mining To blast gold into (as a portion of a mine) in order to cause to appear to be a productive seam.
11. v. cryptography To add filler bytes before encrypting, in order to make brute-force decryption more resource-intensive.
12. v. To include colorful language in.
13. v. To insert or inject something into an object to give it properties it would not naturally have.
14. v. archaeology To add bogus evidence to an archeological site.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The chloride of sodium, a substance used for seasoning food, for the preservation of meat, etc. It is found native in the earth, and is also produced, by evaporation and crystallization, from sea water and other water impregnated with saline particles.
2. n. Hence, flavor; taste; savor; smack; seasoning.
3. n. Hence, also, piquancy; wit; sense.
4. n. A dish for salt at table; a saltcellar.
5. n. colloq. A sailor; -- usually qualified by old.
6. n. (Chem.) The neutral compound formed by the union of an acid and a base.
7. n. Fig.: That which preserves from corruption or error; that which purifies; a corrective; an antiseptic; also, an allowance or deduction.
8. n. Any mineral salt used as an aperient or cathartic, especially Epsom salts, Rochelle salt, or Glauber's salt.
9. n. Prov. Eng. Marshes flooded by the tide.
10. adj. Of or relating to salt; abounding in, or containing, salt; prepared or preserved with, or tasting of, salt; salted.
11. adj. Overflowed with, or growing in, salt water.
12. adj. Fig.: Bitter; sharp; pungent.
13. adj. Fig.: Salacious; lecherous; lustful.
14. v. To sprinkle, impregnate, or season with salt; to preserve with salt or in brine; to supply with salt.
15. v. To fill with salt between the timbers and planks, as a ship, for the preservation of the timber.
16. v. To deposit salt as a saline solution.
17. n. obsolete The act of leaping or jumping; a leap.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a compound formed by replacing hydrogen in an acid by a metal (or a radical that acts like a metal)
2. v. preserve with salt
3. adj. (of speech) painful or bitter
4. v. add zest or liveliness to
5. n. negotiations between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics opened in 1969 in Helsinki designed to limit both countries' stock of nuclear weapons
6. n. the taste experience when common salt is taken into the mouth
7. v. sprinkle as if with salt
8. v. add salt to
9. n. white crystalline form of especially sodium chloride used to season and preserve food