Salted

How to spell salted

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce salted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does salted mean?

1. adjectiveTreated, seasoned, or preserved with salt.
2. verbAdded salt to food, or scattered salt to season, preserve, or melt ice.

Salted in a sentence

• adjective

  Salted butter spread thickly across the warm toast.

• verb

  The council salted the roads before the overnight frost arrived.

• adjective

  The recipe calls for a small bowl of salted peanuts.

• verb

  She salted the soup carefully before serving it to her guests.

Where does salted come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word 'salt' comes from the Old English 'sealt', a native Germanic word that traces back to the same ancient root that gave Latin 'sal' and Greek 'hals', all naming the mineral that has flavoured and preserved food for thousands of years. Because salt was once so valuable, it left its mark on everyday English: the word 'salary' comes from the Latin 'salarium', a payment connected with salt, and to be 'worth one's salt' still echoes that worth. The form 'salted' simply adds the regular '-ed' ending, used both for the past tense of the verb 'to salt' and for the adjective describing food treated with salt. Since 'salt' ends in a clear 't', the suffix is heard as a separate 'id' syllable, so the spelling stays straightforwardly regular with no doubled letters or silent traps.

How the word is built

• salt (root: common seasoning, sodium chloride)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)