# salient

Pronunciation: say "SAY-lee-uhnt" US/UK /ˈseɪ.li.ənt/, AUS /ˈsæɪ.li.ənt/

## Adjective

1. Most noticeable or important; standing out prominently, especially as bearing directly on the matter at hand.
   - Simple: Most noticeable or most important, standing out from everything else.
   - _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._
3. Projecting or pointing outward, especially of an angle or part of a military fortification.
   - Simple: Pointing or sticking out, especially describing an angle or a part of a fort.
   - _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._
4. Describing any angle smaller than two right angles.
   - Simple: Used about any angle that is smaller than two right angles put together.
   - _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._
6. In heraldry, shown in a leaping posture, usually of a four-legged animal.
   - Simple: On a coat of arms, shown jumping, usually about an animal with four legs.
   - _The family's shield bears a silver stag salient on a green field._
   - _Above the gate hung a banner with a black horse salient._

## Noun

2. A part of a defensive line, fortification, or territory that projects outward beyond the rest of the line or border.
   - Simple: A part of a battle line or of a region's land that sticks out beyond the rest.
   - _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._
5. A 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.
   - Simple: In mountain ranges, a part of a curved belt of pushed-up rock that bulges outward.
   - _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._

## Adjective

7. Moving by jumping or springing; leaping. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Moving by jumping.

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/salient (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).