salare

Forms

salare (first-person singular present sàlo, first-person singular past historic salài, past participle salàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] An old variant is saliare.^[2]

Etymology

Most dictionaries take it as formed from Italian sale + -are within Italian.^{[3][4][5][6][2]} DELI and Nocentini treat it under sale.^[7][8] GRADIT derives it instead from Late Latin salāre, and Wiktionary allows a Vulgar Latin *salāre, a change of conjugation from Latin salīre (“to salt”).^[9][1] Körting too sets up such a Latin verb as the source of the Romance verbs.^[10] The same verb is Romanian săra, French saler, Old Occitan salar, Catalan salar, Spanish salar and Portuguese salar.^[11][10]

Latin sāl (“salt”) goes back to a Proto-Indo-European noun with ablaut, nominative Proto-Indo-European *sē̆h₂ls; it is related to Ancient Greek ἅλς (háls, “salt”), Old Irish salann and Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌻𐍄 (salt).^[12] Latin had its own verbs for salting, sallere and the form in ⟨-īre⟩ named above.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is the Tuscan translation of Palladius (about 1340), in the sense of treating food with salt to flavour or keep it;^[7][13] Tommaseo quotes it on salting cheese: con sale trito si sali non troppo (“let it be salted with ground salt, not too much”), where the Latin text has aspergere.^[7][13]

Semantic evolution

Boccaccio tells of a man who went to the country every December to kill his pig and have it salted (farlo salare) every December, and Franco Sacchetti of a pot so salted that it could hardly be eaten.^[13][2] Both the flavouring and the preserving senses have stayed central.^[9][3]

From 1768 the verb is recorded in the sense of skipping school, salare la scuola;^[7] Serianni found it widespread in Tuscany and scattered provinces, Rome among them.^[7] The dictionaries mark it as regional, central and northern.^[3][5] In tanning the verb means to strew salt on the flesh side of hides to keep them until they are tanned.^[9][5]

Timeline

• c. 1340 – The Tuscan translation of Palladius uses salare for salting food.^[7]
• 1768 – The sense “to skip school” is recorded.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To salt food, to season it with salt; also used without an object: ricordati di salare il brodo.^[9][3][6]
2. To salt down, to cure or preserve food in salt.^[9][3][4]
3. (tanning) To strew salt on the flesh side of hides to keep them until tanning.^[9][3][5]
4. (regional, colloquial) To skip a lesson or school; to play truant, like marinare: salare la scuola.^[9][3][5]

Word family

• salagione
• salato
• salatura
• risalare
• salante
• salatoio
• salatore

Related words

• sale
• salario
• insalata
• Latin sal

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 17, 377
3. ^ a b c d e f g Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
5. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
7. ^ a b c d e f g Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
10. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET