salt

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A colorless or white crystalline solid, chiefly sodium chloride, used extensively in ground or granulated form as a food seasoning and preservative.
• noun An ionic chemical compound formed by replacing all or part of the hydrogen ions of an acid with metal ions or other cations.
• noun Any of various mineral salts used as laxatives or cathartics.
• noun Smelling salts.
• noun Epsom salts.
• noun An element that gives flavor or zest.
• noun Sharp lively wit.
• noun Informal A sailor, especially when old or experienced.
• noun A saltcellar.
• adjective Containing or filled with salt.
• adjective Having a salty taste or smell.
• adjective Preserved in salt or a salt solution.
• adjective Flooded with seawater.
• adjective Found in or near such a flooded area.
• transitive verb To add, treat, season, or sprinkle with salt.
• transitive verb To cure or preserve by treating with salt or a salt solution.
• transitive verb To provide salt for (deer or cattle).
• transitive verb To add zest or liveliness to.
• transitive verb To give an appearance of value to by fraudulent means, especially to place valuable minerals in (a mine) for the purpose of deceiving.
• idiom (salt of the earth) A person or group considered the best or most worthy part of society.
• idiom (worth (one's) salt) Efficient and capable.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A compound (NaCl) of chlorin with the metallic base of the alkali soda, one of the most abundantly disseminated and important of all substances.
• noun In chem., any acid in which one or more atoms of hydrogen have been replaced with metallic atoms or basic radicals; any base in which the hydrogen atoms have been more or less replaced by non-metallic atoms or acid radicals; also, the product of the direct union of a metallic oxid and an anhydrid.
• noun plural A salt (as Epsom salts, etc.) used as a medicine. See also smelling-salts.
• noun A marshy place flooded by the tide.
• noun A salt-cellar.
• noun In heraldry, a bearing representing a high decorative salt-cellar, intended to resemble those used in the middle ages. In modern delineations this is merely a covered vase.
• noun Seasoning; that which preserves a thing from corruption, or gives taste and pungency to it.
• noun Taste; smack; savor; flavor.
• noun Wit; piquancy; pungency; sarcasm: as, Attic salt (which see, under Attic).
• noun Modification; hence, allowance; abatement; reserve: as, to take a thing with a grain of salt (see phrase below).
• noun A bronzing material, the chlorid or butter of antimony, used in browning gun-barrels and other iron articles.
• noun Lecherous desire.
• noun A sailor, especially an experienced sailor.
• Having the taste or pungency of salt; impregnated with, containing, or a bounding in salt: as, salt water.
• Prepared or preserved with salt: as, salt beef; salt fish.
• Overflowed with or growing in salt water: as, salt grass or hay.
• Sharp; bitter; pungent.
• Costly; dear; expensive: as, he paid a salt price for it.
• Lecherous; salacious.
• A game something like hide-and-seek.
• To sprinkle, impregnate, or season with salt, or with a salt: as, to salt fish, beef, or pork.
• To fill with salt between the timbers and planks, as a ship, for the preservation of the timber.
• To furnish with salt; feed salt to: as, to salt cows.
• In soap-making, to add salt to (the lye in the kettles) after saponification of the fatty ingredients, in order to separate the soap from the lye.
• In photography, to impregnate (paper, canvas, or other tissue) with a salt or mixture of salts in solution, which, when treated with other solutions, form new compounds in the texture.
• To make, as a freshman, drink salt water, by way of initiation, according to a university custom of the sixteenth century.