How Salt Seasoned Our Words

I keep a saltshaker on my table, like most people. It’s ordinary, nothing special. Yet hidden in those small grains is a story every reader and writer can appreciate. Salt hasn’t only flavored food—it has flavored language itself. This is fun trivia worth sharing.

Take the word salary. It comes from the Latin salarium, which referred to payments made to Roman soldiers, sometimes with salt. From there, the word moved into the languages we read today. Every payday, whether weekly or monthly, carries a reminder of salt in the word salary. Writers use that word without a second thought, but its history tells us much about how words preserve stories.

Expressions about salt peppers our speech. When someone is “worth their salt,” we mean they are competent and valuable. The phrase reaches back to the time when salt stood as payment. In that way, language becomes a history book. Every time we use such expressions, we read echoes of older worlds.

Even being “salty” has shifted meaning through centuries of writing. At first, it described sailors weathered by sea life, a phrase you can find in maritime journals. Later, in literature, it meant someone witty or sharp-tongued. Today, it means someone cranky or annoyed, especially in online writing. The word changed its flavor over time, and written records let us trace that journey.

Salt found its way into books as well. Shakespeare used salt both literally and figuratively. In Othello, he spoke of “the salt of common tears.” In Measure for Measure, he wrote of “the salt of most just displeasure.” To him, salt represented deep emotion, whether sorrow or anger. Writers since have borrowed from that tradition, sprinkling salt as a metaphor whenever they needed extra bite.

Even the Bible carried salt into our reading lives. Jesus called his followers “the salt of the earth” in the Book of Matthew. The phrase now stands as one of the most widely recognized compliments in the English-speaking world. Writers, preachers, and poets have carried it forward for centuries.

Salt also helped preserve not only food but also words. In ancient times, scrolls and manuscripts traveled along the same trade routes as salt. Caravans that hauled blocks of it across deserts often carried papyrus and parchment as well. In this way, salt and words journeyed side by side, each vital to survival—one for the body, the other for the mind.

I enjoy trivia like this because it reminds me of how language works. Writers give us words, but history keeps seasoning them. What began as a soldier’s ration ends up in our novels, poems, and conversations. The next time you see the word salary in print, you’ll know you’re also seeing salt.

Fun trivia connects us with both food and language, with both taste and text. It makes the ordinary feel extraordinary. Salt no longer measures wealth, yet it still enriches our speech. When we pass the shaker at dinner, we’re also passing along centuries of human storytelling.

This is why I love sharing trivia tied to reading and writing. It gives us more than facts—it gives us perspective. Our language is a living library, where even small words like salt hide long adventures. Writers may not get paid in salt anymore, but their words remain worth every grain.

That’s the heartbeat of my new book, The Power of Authors: A Rallying Cry for Today’s Writers to Recognize Their Power, Rise to Their Calling, and Write with Moral Conviction, written with Lois Swensen and a foreword by Jane L. Evanson, PhD, Professor Emerita at Alaska Pacific University. It launches this September. You’ve been reading its heartbeat in these messages—soon you’ll be able to hold the book in your hands.

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