salt down

present singular third person salts down · participle present salting down · participle past salted down · past salted down

1. datedtransitivestrictlyTo salt (something) to slow decomposition, such as to prepare food, treat wood or preserve a corpse.
2. transitiveTo salt (something).

   County highway crews manned their trucks to salt down the roads, but the snowfall was predited to continue until tonight.

   1967 February 6, “Chicago Slapped Again: Snowstorm, Bitter Cold Hit Area”, in Warren Times-Mirror and Observer, volume 1, number 271, Warren, Pa.: Central Publishing Company, →OCLC, page A-1, column 3

   2 more examples

   He has been totally occupied since we sat down, margarining every inch of his roll, likewise his baked potato, salting down everything in sight.

   2014 March 20, Judith Felsenfeld, “The Fugitive”, in Blaustein’s Kiss: Stories, Rhinebeck, N.Y.: Epigraph Publishing Service, →ISBN, pages 123–124

   I sat there and watched as he carefully salted down his beer glass from the shaker on the table. “To eliminate intestinal drag,” he said, with a wry grin, just the same as he’d said every other time I’d seen him salt his draft ale.

   2014 August 16, Steve Vernon, “There’s Truth in Cheap Draft Beer”, in Not Just Any Old Ghost Story (Steve Vernon’s Sea Tales; 7), Stark Raven Publishing, published 2016, →ISBN, page 26