• Salty

    Pronunciation

    • UK IPA: /ˈsÉ’l.ti/
    • Rhymes: -É’lti

    Origin

    From salt + -y.

    Full definition of salty

    Adjective

    salty

    1. Tasting of salt.
    2. Containing salt.
    3. (figuratively) Coarse, provocative, earthy; said of language.
    4. (figuratively) Experienced, especially used to indicate a veteran of the naval services; salty dog (from salt of the sea).
    5. (US slang) Irritated, annoyed; from sharp, spicy flavor of salt.
      • 1946, Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues, Payback Press 1999, page 61: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.
      • 1969, Iceberg Slim, Pimp: The Story of My Life, Holloway House Publishing, page 162:I want to beg your pardon for making you salty that night.
    6. (linguistics) Pertaining to 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").

    Coordinate terms

    • (irritated attitude) sassy

    Derived terms

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