salts

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of salt.

   Mineral springs leave behind a crust of dried salts on the rocks.

   Different metal salts give fireworks their bright colors.

   Note

   The plural does its most precise work in chemistry, where salts are the compounds that form when an acid reacts with a base, as in metal salts and mineral salts. It also counts the word's other countable meanings. Old salts are veteran sailors, a slang use. In computing, salts are random strings added to passwords before hashing. Salts are also workers who take jobs in order to unionize a company. The spelling is shared with the verb form.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of salt.

   The cook salts the broth to taste before plating each dish.

   Each winter the city salts its roads to keep them from freezing.

   Note

   The present-tense form for he, she or it carries every meaning of the verb. A cook salts a dish. A fraudster salts a mine with blasted-in metal, or salts a dig with bogus finds. Most uses take a direct object, but the sense of depositing salt from a solution stands alone. An object is the surest sign that you are reading the verb rather than the plural noun.

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