- [uncountable] a white substance that is added to food to make it taste better or to preserve it. Salt is obtained from mines and is also found in seawater. It is sometimes called common salt to show that it is different from other chemical salts. Its chemical name is sodium chloride.
- Pass the salt, please.
- a pinch of salt (= a small amount of it)
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Sprinkle with salt to taste.
- Avoid adding table salt to your food.
- salt and vinegar crisps
Extra ExamplesTopics Fooda1- Don't put so much salt on your chips!
- He could taste the salt from the water in his mouth.
- He wants to reduce his salt intake.
- I could smell the salt air as it whipped through my hair.
- Most foodstuffs contain some salt.
- a diet low in salt
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- mineral
- rock
- sea
- …
- grain
- pinch
- taste
- add
- put in
- …
- crystals
- solution
- content
- …
- high in salt
- low in salt
- salt and pepper
- …
- [countable] (chemistry) a chemical formed from a metal and an acid
- mineral salts
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- mineral
- rock
- sea
- …
- grain
- pinch
- taste
- add
- put in
- …
- crystals
- solution
- content
- …
- high in salt
- low in salt
- salt and pepper
- …
- salts[plural] a substance that looks or tastes like salt
- bath salts (= used to give a pleasant smell to bath water)
Word OriginOld English sealt (noun), sealtan (verb), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zout and German Salz (nouns), from an Indo-European root shared by Latin sal, Greek hals ‘salt’.
Idioms
See salt in the Oxford Advanced American DictionarySee salt in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic Englishlike a dose of salts
- (British English, old-fashioned, informal) very fast and easily
- He got through the housework like a dose of salts.
rub salt into the wound | rub salt into somebody’s wounds
- to make a difficult experience even more difficult for somebody
the salt of the earth
- a very good and honest person that you can always depend on
take something with a pinch of salt
(North American English also take something with a grain of salt)
- to be careful about believing that something is completely true
- If I were you, I’d take everything he says with a pinch of salt.
worth your/its salt
- deserving respect, especially because you do your job well
- Any teacher worth her salt knows that.
Check pronunciation:
salt