salty
- 1Having the flavor of salt.
The broth tasted unexpectedly salty after extra stock went in.
Fresh oysters carry a salty tang straight from the sea.
Note
The everyday taste word, built the plain English way: Middle English salti, salt plus -y, with close cousins in German salzig and Dutch zoutig. It names one of the basic tastes the tongue detects, alongside sweet, sour, bitter and umami. Adam Rogers lists them together in Wired in 2018. It compares regularly: saltier, saltiest.
- 2Holding salt as one of its contents.
The salty marsh soil supports only a few hardy plants.
Engineers worried that the salty groundwater would corrode the pipes.
Similarsaline, briny, brackish
Oppositefresh
Note
Here the salt is a matter of content, not flavor. Nobody tastes the salty ore that goes into the brine tanks at Zipaquirá. Use it for soil, groundwater or rock that holds salt, when what matters is chemistry or corrosion rather than the palate. The taste sense is the one for food.
- 3Irritated, angry, or bitter, often over something minor.
She was still salty about not making the team.
The losing players turned salty and blamed the referee.
Similarbitter, sore, annoyed, irritated, upset
Note
Slang for a sour mood, and older than it sounds: Mezz Mezzrow uses it in 1946, Iceberg Slim in 1969. It takes with for the target (salty with the piano player) and works after make (making you salty). It also modifies nouns like attitude. It shares its spicy-flavor image with the "earthy talk" meaning, but it describes feeling, not speech. Keep it to casual talk.
- 4Coarse, earthy, and deliberately provocative, especially of language or humor.
Her memoir is full of salty anecdotes she never told in public.
The novel's salty dialogue earned it a mature rating.
Similarracy, bawdy, earthy, ribald, spicy
Note
Salt's sharp, spicy bite is the image behind this figurative use: talk that stings a little. It attaches to language and humor, such as things to say, an outburst or a memoir's anecdotes. It pairs naturally with characteristically, for someone known for it. It grades easily, so a host can be saltier off camera, as Michelle Goldberg put it in 2023. Salty speech is earthy, not angry. Anger belongs to the slang "annoyed" meaning.
- 5Highly experienced, especially as a seasoned veteran of naval service.
The crew respected their salty chief, who had decades at sea behind him.
A salty old sailor can read the weather better than any instrument.
Similarseasoned, experienced, veteran, weathered, grizzled
Oppositegreen, inexperienced, raw
Note
The salt in question is the sea's, not the kitchen's: a sailor seasoned by long service. It sits before nouns for people, as in a salty Russian seafarer, or the salty boys at a sailor's tavern in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. It lives on in the fixed phrase salty dog for an old hand at sea. Away from ships it can still mean simply seasoned and experienced.
- 6Pertaining to Sardinian and those Catalan dialects of the Balearic Islands and the Catalan coast whose definite articles descend from Latin ipse rather than ille.
Her thesis compares the salty dialects of Mallorca with the Catalan spoken in Barcelona.
Sardinian is the best-known salty variety in the region.
Note
A linguist's label translated from Catalan, which calls these forms article salat, the "salted article." Most Catalan says el and la for "the." The Balearic and coastal dialects instead say es and sa, built on Latin ipse, and Sardinian draws on the same root. In English the adjective usually sits before dialect, variety or article, and it has nothing to do with taste.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English salti, equivalent to salt plus the suffix -y. It is related to words like West Frisian sâltich, Dutch zoutig, and German salzig, all meaning "salty." The slang senses come from the sharp, spicy flavor of salt, or perhaps from the idea of someone shedding salty tears.