The expression “to be worth your salt” is older than the
English language itself. It was handed down from ancient Rome.
Roman soldiers were paid a salarium, which suggests that they’re getting
paid enough to buy salt. Salt was expensive back then, and not always
easy to get, so this was significant, and did lend some status to anyone making
enough money to buy it. There’s a common misunderstanding that the Roman
army paid all its wages in salt, but there’s no evidence that this is actually
true. This might have been done sometimes, when money was tight, but it
was not common practice. Still, salt was important enough that if a
soldier were “earning his salt”, he was worth what he was getting paid.
In medieval English, the expression “above the salt” was used sometimes to
refer to aristocrats, who had a lot more money and power than necessary to
purchase salt.
From salarium, the modern word salary comes,
whether you’re paid in iodized crystals or direct deposit. Curiously, the
word salad also refers to salt. Early Roman recipes used salt to
make greens more palatable. (And, since this was Rome, there was probably
some olive oil involved, too.)
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