salty

comparative saltier · superlative saltiest

1. Tasting of salt.

   A few types of molecules get sensed by receptors on the tongue. Protons coming off of acids ping receptors for "sour." Sugars get received as "sweet." Bitter, salty, and the proteinaceous flavor umami all set off their own neural cascades.

   2018 May 16, Adam Rogers, “The Fundamental Nihilism of Yanny vs. Laurel”, in Wired

2. Containing salt.

   My job was to couple the dumpers, full or empty, then uncouple them at the main shaft, and to open and close the weather door on the trip to the roof galleries, where the salty ore was dynamited and broken down.

   2008, Günter Grass, translated by Michael Henry Heim, Peeling the Onion, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 223

   1 more example

   At Zipaquirá, the salty ore is taken from the mine in chunks, then thrown into large tanks of water, where the salt is dissolved out. The resulting brine is drawn off into pipelines, containers, or tank trucks and sold […]

   1957, Americas (English Ed.)

3. figurativelyCoarse; provocative; earthy.

   (In characteristically salty fashion, Sara admits: “I was no doubt a horrible little bitch" at this age.)

   2010, R. Tripp Evans, Grant Wood: A Life, Knopf, →ISBN, page 201

   3 more examples

   In the following piece she has some characteristically salty things to say about what happens when law and medicine meet.

   1962, William Henry Davenport, The Good Physician: A Treasury of Medicine

   The court might have been tempted to construe the First Amendment as too momentous — too consequential — to vindicate a disappointed teenager’s salty outburst after being cut from the varsity cheer squad.

   2021 June 24, Justin Driver, “A Cheerleader Lands an F on Snapchat, but a B+ in Court”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Sometimes hosts are a little saltier when the cameras aren’t rolling, but I don’t recall ever hearing any daylight between the views they express on-air and off.

   2023 February 17, Michelle Goldberg, “What Fox News Says When You’re Not Listening”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

4. figurativelyExperienced, especially used to indicate a veteran of the naval services; salty dog (from salt of the sea).

   Plus bits of business involving a salty Russian seafarer and overflying warplanes.

   2015 March 12, Bill Mann, “The film that makes me cry: Local Hero”, in The Guardian

   1 more example

   There's a sailor's tavern at the end of the street where I could find companionship if I chose (one catches salty boys going in and out at any hour) but only music matters to me now.

   2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, London: Sceptre (Hodder and Stoughton), →ISBN

5. slangIrritated, annoyed, angry, bitter.

   I want to beg your pardon for making you salty that night.

   1969, Iceberg Slim, Pimp: The Story of My Life, Holloway House Publishing, page 162

   3 more examples

   Ray and Fuzzy were salty with our unhip no-playing piano player, because she broke time on the piano so bad that the strings yelled whoa to the hammers.

   1946, Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, Bernard Wolfe, “They Found the Body in a Ditch”, in Really the Blues, New York, N.Y.: Random House, book 2 (1923–1928: Chicago, Chicago), page 61

   Misery can make you blame everybody else for your salty attitude. You think people just don't get where you're coming from. How can so many people be so stupid, you think. Well, your misery is very likely self-inflicted.

   2004, J. Ransom, Colla'd Greens Fuh-ya Soul, →ISBN, page 39

   "I regret being salty and bitchy towards you most of the time. Yesterday's offence is unforgivable, but can you forgive me for the day-to-day bickering in the past?” “Would you even care? Especially if you had not been caught outright[…]"

   2021, SB Akshobhya, The Panipuri Crimes, Sristhi Publishers & Distributors, →ISBN

6. human sciencesPertaining to the Sardinian language and those dialects of Catalan, spoken in the Balearic Islands and along the coast of Catalonia, that use definitive articles descended from the Latin ipse (“self”) instead of the Latin ille (“that”).