salt

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“

I'm an Orioles fan and any Orioles fan worth his or her salt is also a Nationals fan.

—Bugs & Cranks

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American Heritage Dictionary (23)

noun 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.
noun A chemical compound formed by replacing all or part of the hydrogen ions of an acid with metal ions or electropositive radicals.
noun Any of various mineral salts used as laxatives or cathartics.

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Century Dictionary (148)

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 (1) from evaporation of the water of the ocean and of interior saline lakes; (2) from the evaporation of the water rising naturally in saline springs or obtained by boring; (3) 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. Ley salt on thi trenchere with knyfe that be clene; Not to myche, be thou were, for that is not gode. Booke of Precedence (E. E. T. S., extra ser.), i. 60. Then, when the languid flames at length subside, He strows a bed of glowing embers wide, Above the coals the smoking fragments turns, And sprinkles sacred salt from lifted urns. Pope, Iliad, ix. 282. Abandon those from your table and salt whom your own or others' experience shall descry dangerous. Bp. Hall, Epistles, i. 8.
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. (J. P. Cooke, Chem. Phil., p. 110.) 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.
plural A salt (as Epsom salts, etc.) used as a medicine. See also smelling-salts.

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I'm an Orioles fan and any Orioles fan worth his or her salt is also a Nationals fan. — Bugs & Cranks
So that others don't make the same mistakes, they've released their top five no-no's for email marketing, although I have to say, they seem to me rather rudimentary elements of email marketing that any marketer worth his or her salt should be aware of. — BizReport
Any theater person worth his or her salt should be a kind of trailblazer instead. — The Spy in the Sandwich Eats the Sun
This salt is then used to create steam which drives a turbine to produce electricity. — Climate Ark Climate Change & Global Warming RSS Newsfeed
"The ultimate goal of any lawyer worth his salt is to be a judge," attorney — The Memphis Daily News

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Middle English, from Old English sealt; see sal- in Indo-European roots.

Century Dictionary (2)

I. n. from Middle English salt, sealt, from Anglo-Saxon sealt = Old Saxon salt = Middle Dutch sout, Dutch zout = Middle Low German salt, solt, Low German solt = Old High German Middle High German G. salz = Icelandic salt = Swedish Danish salt = Gothic (Moesogothic) salt = Welsh hallt (Lapp. sallte, from Scandinavian), salt; apparently with the formative -t of the adjective form. II. a. from Middle English salt, from Anglo-Saxon sealt = OFries. salt = Middle Low German solt = Icelandic saltr = Swedish Danish salt, salt, = Latin salsus, salted. The name in other tongues is of a simpler type: L. sal (later Italian sale = Spanish Portuguese Provencal sal = French sel) = Greek ἅλς = Old Bulgarian solĭ = Servian Polish sol = Bohemian sůl = Russian solĭ = Lettish sāls = Welsh hal, halen = Old Irish salan, salt. Hence, from the L. form, sal, salad, salary, saline, salmagundi, seller (salt-cellar), saltpeter, sauce, sausage, souse, etc.
from Middle English salten, also selten, silten, from Anglo-Saxon *sealtian, also syltan = Dutch zouten = Middle Low German solten = Old High German salzan, Middle High German G. salzen = Icelandic Swedish salta = Danish salte = Gothic (Moesogothic) saltan (cf. Latin salire, salere, sallere), salt; from the noun: see salt, n.

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salt

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