salient
Noun pluralsalients
Pluralsalients
- 1Most noticeable or important; standing out prominently, especially as bearing directly on the matter at hand.
A red water tower is the salient feature of the town's otherwise flat skyline.
The risk of a water shortage grew salient as the drought dragged on into the fall.
UsageCommon pairings: a salient feature, the salient point, the most salient fact.
Similarprominent, striking, conspicuous, noticeable, notable
Oppositeinconspicuous, minor, insignificant, peripheral
- 2A part of a defensive line, fortification, or territory that projects outward beyond the rest of the line or border.
The division held the salient for three weeks under fire from both flanks.
By spring the front had formed two deep salients that the generals were desperate to straighten.
Similarbulge, projection
Note
A word the trench warfare of the First World War made familiar. Salients are usually named after the place where the line bulges, as with the Montdidier salient on the Picardy front, and measured by how far they push into enemy ground. Jan Morris describes salients never more than a few miles deep, on fronts a few hundred yards wide.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- There was a Montdidier salient on the Picardy front. en.wiktionary.org
- A salient's depth measures its extension into enemy territory. en.wikipedia.org
- Jan Morris described salients never more than a few miles deep and battlefronts often only a few hundred yards wide. en.wiktionary.org
- 3Projecting or pointing outward, especially of an angle or part of a military fortification.
Each salient angle of the star-shaped fort was crowned with a gun platform.
The building's salient corner pushed out into the narrow lane.
Similarprojecting
Note
The engineer's and the soldier's sense, and the one the noun grew from. Latin saliēns meant springing or leaping, and a part of a fortification that springs forward toward the attacker is salient; a salient angle is one that points outward, which is also the geometer's meaning. The noun a salient in a defensive line is simply this adjective made into a thing: a stretch of works or trench that juts out toward the enemy.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The outward-projecting sense belongs to military fortification and engineering. battlefields.org
- Latin saliēns meant springing or leaping. en.wiktionary.org
- Salient describes an outward-projecting fortification or angle, including in geometry. gutenberg.org
Less common meanings
- 4Describing any angle smaller than two right angles.
Every interior angle of a convex polygon is salient.
The drafter marked each salient angle of the floor plan in red and each reflex angle in blue.
Oppositereflex
Note
Geometry has a precise use: any angle smaller than two right angles counts as salient. Its opposite is the reflex angle, which opens wider than two right angles. On the outline of a figure, salient corners point outward while reflex ones bend back in, so a strictly convex polygon has only salient angles and an L-shape mixes the two.
- 5A convex, outward-bulging part of a curving fold-and-thrust belt, thrust sheet, or single thrust fault, resulting from mountain-building deformation, differences in critical taper, or uneven present-day erosion.
Geologists mapped two salients separated by a narrow recess along the front of the range.
Within the salient, the thrust faults lie farther apart than in the neighboring recess.
Oppositerecess
Note
In structural geology the word comes paired with its opposite, the recess. A mountain front's salients are its more advanced segments and its recesses the lagging ones, a pairing found in geological writing since at least 1932; together they give a fold-and-thrust belt its wavy outline. Inside a salient the critical taper is lower and the thrust ramps lie farther apart.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Salients and recesses are opposing features: salients advance farther toward the foreland, while recesses lag behind. earth-prints.org
- The geological pairing is documented as dating to at least 1932. earth-prints.org
- Alternating salients and recesses produce an undulating thrust front. earth-prints.org
- Within salients, critical taper is lower and thrust ramps are farther apart than in recesses. earth-prints.org
- 6In heraldry, shown in a leaping posture, usually of a four-legged animal.
The family's shield bears a silver stag salient on a green field.
Above the gate hung a banner with a black horse salient.
Note
A heraldic term, and the place where the word's origin shows most plainly: Latin saliens, "springing, leaping", from salio, "leap". It describes a beast, usually four-legged, shown in mid-spring.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Salient derives from Latin saliens, meaning springing or leaping, from salio, meaning leap. en.wiktionary.org
- The heraldic term describes a beast in a springing posture. gutenberg.org
- Salient is used for four-legged heraldic beasts. heraldry.sca.org
- 7Moving by jumping or springing; leaping.
frogs and salient animals
1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia EpidemicaNote
The literal leap, used of creatures that get about by jumping. Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica speaks of "frogs and salient animals", and the use covers leapers such as frogs, fleas, hares and grasshoppers.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Salient has a literal sense describing animals that move by leaping. gutenberg.org
- Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica contains the quoted phrase. penelope.uchicago.edu
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
The senses "leaping" (in heraldry) and "projecting outward" are borrowed from Latin saliēns ("springing, leaping"), the present participle of saliō ("leap, spring"). The more recent senses "prominent" and "pertinent" come from the phrase salient point, a calque of Latin punctum saliēns, which translated Aristotle's term for the embryo's heart seen in an opened egg, which he thought already seemed to move; compare the German calque der springende Punkt.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 9 facts
- The heraldic sense ‘leaping’ and the sense ‘projecting outward’ derive from Latin saliēns. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin saliēns means ‘springing, leaping’ and is the present participle of saliō. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin saliō means ‘leap, spring’. en.wiktionary.org
- The senses ‘prominent’ and ‘pertinent’ developed later from ‘salient point’. en.wiktionary.org
- ‘Salient point’ is a calque of Latin punctum saliēns. en.wiktionary.org
- Punctum saliēns derives from a Latin translation of Aristotle’s description. en.wiktionary.org
- Aristotle described the embryonic heart as a visible spot inside an egg. gutenberg.org
- Aristotle described that spot as already moving. gutenberg.org
- German ‘der springende Punkt’ is also a calque of punctum saliēns. en.wiktionary.org