silt

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English silt, also cilte and sylt,^[2][3][4] probably of Scandinavian origin.^{[4][3][5][6][7]} The OED calls it of doubtful origin, but apparently first a word for a salty deposit,^[8][7] and compares Danish sylt (“salt marsh”) and Norwegian sylt, dialectal sylta and Swedish sylta, salt marsh, sea beach, and Middle Low German sulte, Dutch zult and Old High German sulza, all from a zero-grade form of the stem of salt.^[8][9][10] The Middle English Dictionary compares Middle Dutch silte and Old Swedish sylta (“mud”).^[2][11] Barnhart instead takes it as probably borrowed from Middle Low German silte or the same word in Middle Dutch, salt marsh, brine,^[12][13] and Etymonline gives both explanations.^[11] The Germanic word is Proto-Germanic *sultijō (“salty water, brine”),^[1] which Kroonen and Orel write *sultjō and treat as a zero-grade formation related to the word for salt.^[14][15] Old English has the same grade in Old English unsylt (“unsalted”) and syltan (“to salt, season”).^[8][16] Skeat also proposed a formation from Middle English silen (“to strain”).^[17][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Sand, or fine sediment: about 1440, in the Promptorium Parvulorum, where cylte glosses Latin glarea.^[8][2][13] Etymonline dates it to the mid 15th century, as fine sand or sediment deposited by seawater.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Ayto thinks the word first meant the mud of salt flats by river estuaries, which would explain its link with salt.^[18] The general sense of mud or fine soil carried by water is recorded by the 1690s,^[11] and Johnson (1755) defined silt as mud or slime.^[19] The verb arose in 1799, of channels and harbours becoming choked with silt, first in a report on Lincolnshire agriculture,^[8][11][3] and by 1825 it was used transitively, of silt filling up a channel, in Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia.^[8][11] In the 19th century geologists used the noun for a bed of such matter (1881),^[8] and soil scientists for particles between sand and clay in size (1873).^[8][3] Wright recorded the noun and the verb in dialects from Scotland to Sussex, and a different silt, a trough for salting meat, in the south-west.^[20]

Timeline

• c. 1440 – sand, sediment.^[8][2][13]
• 1799 – verb, of a channel, to become choked with silt.^[8][11][3]
• before 1825 – verb, of silt, to fill up a channel.^[8]
• 1830 – verb, to cover over with silt.^[8]
• 1873 – in soil science, particles between sand and clay in size.^[8]
• 1881 – a bed or layer of silt.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. Loose sedimentary material carried and deposited by water, with grains finer than sand and coarser than clay.^[3][5][8]
2. A deposit of such material, as in a river bed or a lake.^[5][8]

Verb

1. To become filled or choked with silt, usually with up: The harbour silted up over the years.^[3][5][8]
2. To fill, block or cover something with silt.^[3][5][8]
3. To flow or drift in like silt.^[3][8]

Word family

• siltation
• silty
• siltstone

Related words

• salt

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
14. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
15. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
16. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
17. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
18. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
19. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
20. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)