Grain of salt

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Look up grain of salt in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

(With) a grain of salt is a literal translation of a Latin phrase, (cum) grano salis.

In common parlance, if something is to be taken with a grain of salt, it means that a copious measure of skepticism should be applied regarding a claim; that it should not be blindly accepted and believed without any doubt or reservation. According to the Oxford English Dictionary "to take 'it' with a grain of salt" means "to accept a thing less than fully". It dates this usage back to 1647. According to the The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, the phrase also means to "view a statement with a skeptical attitude."

Since in Italy "to have salt in your pumpkin" (avere sale in zucca - pumpkin is a funny way to say "head") means to have intelligence and reasoning capabilities, "grain of salt" often means "a little bit of intelligence". So, "cum grano salis", in its latin form, it is often used when it is needed to show that intelligence and personal judgement are needed, as in "I drink wine cum grano salis since I must drive" (with care, moderately) or "please, repair this electric cable cum grano salis" (not scanting, thinking to the consequences or dangers).

The phrase comes from Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, regarding the discovery of a recipe for an antidote to a poison.^[1] In the antidote, one of the ingredients was a grain of salt. Threats involving the poison were thus to be taken "with a grain of salt" and therefore less seriously. An alternative account says that the Roman general Pompey believed he could make himself immune to poison by ingesting small amounts of various poisons, and he took this treatment with a grain of salt to help him swallow the poison. In this version, the salt is not the antidote, it was taken merely to assist in swallowing the poison.

The Dutch language has a similar phrase: een korreltje zout.^[2]

The term can occasionally be found in older recipes as a literal measurement on an amount of salt.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References