salting

Pluralsaltings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Treating food or an icy road by scattering salt over it.

   The city's overnight salting left the highways clear by morning.

   A careful salting brought out the flavor hidden in the soup.

   Similargritting, seasoning

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of salt.

   The road crew is salting the highway before the freeze sets in.

   Salting the cod properly requires several days of careful curing.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs. After be it marks an action in progress (the crew is salting the road), and as a gerund it names the action itself (salting the cod takes days). The verb behind it covers the kitchen, timber packed with salt to preserve it, mines doctored to look productive, and weapons laced to give off more radiation. Once it takes a plural, as in saltings, it has become a noun, like the salt marsh.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act of tampering with an investigation site by planting false or fabricated evidence.

   The defense argued that salting by a rogue officer had compromised the whole case.

   Forensic review revealed deliberate salting at the burglary site.

   Similartampering, planting

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A salt marsh, low-lying coastal ground that is flooded by salt water at high tide.

   The estuary's saltings provide nesting grounds for wading birds.

   A grazing salting stretched between the village and the open sea.

   Similarsaltmarsh, marsh

   Note

   Here the word names a place rather than an action, and it readily takes the plural for a stretch of tidal marsh: J. A. Baker's The Peregrine (1967) has saltings ringing with the redshank's cry. Unlike the action nouns around it, this one is countable. A salting is something you walk across, not something you do, so it pairs naturally with words for coast, birds and estuary.

5. 5
   nounhistoricalUKcountable or uncountable

   The festive celebration associated with the Eton montem, a ceremonial procession formerly held by scholars at Eton College.

   Senior boys presided over the salting, gathering 'salt money' from the assembled visitors.

   The salting drew large crowds to Eton every few years.

   Note

   A word that survives only in histories of Eton College. During the montem, senior scholars collected "salt money" from spectators toward a captain's university costs. The custom ended in 1847, so the word belongs in the past tense. In a modern sentence, readers will take salting as the sprinkling of salt unless Eton is named nearby.

Showing meanings only. Show all 5