The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

Salt

Nobody is certain where the word soldier comes from, but the best guess is that it has to do with salt. Salt was infinitely more valuable in the ancient world than it is today. To the Romans, salt was white, tasty gold. Legionaries were given a special stipend just to buy themselves salt and make their food bearable; this was called the salarium and it’s where we get the English word salary, which is really just salt-money. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder therefore went so far as to theorise that soldier itself derived from sal dare, meaning to give salt. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this theory, but as Pliny the Elder was a little bit of a nutjob, it should probably be taken with a pinch of salt, which, like the salt of the earth, makes something easier to swallow.

Mainly, though, salt is not military but culinary. Salt gets into almost every food, and into an awful lot of food words. The Romans put salt into every single one of their sauces and called them salsa. The Old French dropped the L and made this sauce, and they did the same with Roman salsicus, or salted meats, that turned into saucisses and then into sausages. The Italians and Spanish kept the L and still make salami,[26] which they can dip into salsa, and the Spanish then invented a saucy dance of the same name.

So necessary is salt to a good meal that we usually put it on the table twice. The Old French used to make do with a salier or salt-box on the table at mealtimes. The English, who are always trying to work out how the French make such delicious food, stole the invention and took it back home. However, once the salier had been removed from France, people quickly forgot the word’s origin and how it should be spelt. So we ended up changing salier to cellar. Then, just to be clear what was in the cellar, we added salt onto the beginning and called it a salt cellar, which is, etymologically, a salt-salier or salt-salter.

The Romans would have used a salt-salter to season their vegetables and make herba salata, which we have since shortened to salad. This brings us to a strangely salty coincidence involving the good old days. In Antony and Cleopatra the Egyptian queen talks of her

And the phrase has now taken up residence in the language. We use salad days as a synonym for halcyon days, which by an odd coincidence also means salty days.