Salvage

How to spell salvage

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce salvage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does salvage mean?

1. verbTo rescue or recover something of value from loss, damage, or destruction.
2. nounThe act of saving property from loss, or the goods so recovered.

Salvage in a sentence

• verb

  The crew worked through the night to salvage what cargo they could from the sinking ship.

• noun

  The yard sells reclaimed timber and other building salvage at low prices.

• verb

  She managed to salvage a few family photos from the flooded basement.

• noun

  Insurers paid a substantial fee for the salvage of the stranded tanker.

Where does salvage come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin verb salvare, meaning 'to save' or 'to keep safe', which itself grew out of salvus, meaning 'unharmed' or 'whole'. In medieval Latin this gave salvagium, a legal term for the payment owed to someone who rescued a ship or its cargo from the sea. English borrowed it through French in the late 1600s, and at first it referred strictly to that maritime reward for saving property. Over the following centuries the meaning broadened from the payment to the act of recovery itself, and then to the rescued goods, so that today we salvage furniture from a fire or buy salvage from a wreck. The same salvare root quietly survives in the everyday words 'save', 'salvation' and 'salvo', and remembering that 'salv' core (the saving part) helps fix the spelling against the easily confused 'savage'.

How the word is built

• salv- (from Latin salvare: to save)
• -age (noun suffix: action or result)