Salary

New discovery!  Searching "F*** Salt," "Eff Salt," or "F Salt" in Google brings up this very blog on the first page!  My indecision still managed to pay off, so I guess I'm keeping the name as it is (see my logistical problems post).  Mainly, though, someone very important to me suggested that I keep the name, and so that's what I'm doing.

But back on topic: Mochileiro mentioned something pretty interesting in the comments of my last post.  He pointed out that the word "salary" is derived from the word "salt."

Now, something I like besides salt is money (because it buys more salt, duh), so the notion that these two things would be related (more than as far as supermarket transactions go) peaked my interest.

By around 550 BC, receiving salt from someone was synonymous with being in that person's service (as far as I know, receiving clothes did not release you from said service).  Salt production was often the sole privilege of monarchies or the ruling elite (Occupy Salt Street, anyone?).  For example in The Book of Ezra (Ezra 4:14, English Standard Version), the servants of  King Artaxerxes I describe their loyalty thus: "Now because we eat the salt of the palace and it is not fitting for us to witness the king’s dishonor, therefore we send and inform the king..."

The Latin salarium bore connection to Roman soldiers, salt, and employment.  As good old Pliny the Elder wrote, in his Naturalis Historia XXXI: "[I]n Rome. . .the soldier's pay was originally salt and the word salary derives from it..."

 
Some suggest that the word "soldier" is derived from the Latin sal dare (to give salt), but a more common theory suggests that the word "soldier" comes from the gold solodius (a type of coin) with which Roman soldiers were paid.  This payment may have been an allowance for the purchase of salt or perhaps compensation for soldiers conquering salt supplies or guarding the Salt Roads leading to Rome.

Take it With a Grain of Salt

I'm awful at keeping schedules.  Ahem:

Perhaps you've heard the phrase, "to take something with a grain of salt."  Perhaps you haven't.  If the latter is the case, then I assure you that it is a fairly common and certainly standard phrase.  It is a staple in phrase books no doubt.

 A grain of salt.  Actual size.

It means, essentially, to view something with skepticism or to not take something too seriously.  For example: "The empiricist took the psychic's prediction with a grain of salt."

The idiom is derived from the Latin phrase, cum grano salis, which you can conveniently substitute for "with a grain of salt" the next time you use the phrase and want to sound like a learned scholar.  So with the previous example: "The empiricist took the psychic's prediction cum grano salis...  B****es."

In modern day Italy, the phrase still exists in the form, "avere sale in zucca," which translates roughly as, "to have salt in your pumpkin."  Here, "pumpkin" is a metonym for "head," and the salt represents wit or intelligence (how fitting!).  Similar phrases also exist in the Dutch (een korreltje zout) and Danish (et gran salt) languages.

The origin of the idiom can be attributed to this fellow,

whom we no doubt all recognize as Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD).  His Naturalis Historia discusses the discovery of an antidote to poison, with one of the ingredients being a grain of salt.  Thus, the poison itself could be taken less seriously.  Alternately, the phrase is attributed to the Roman general Pompey, who, in an effort to build immunities against a variety of poisons, ingested poisons with a grain of salt to make them easier to swallow.

Of course the Latin word salis happens to mean both "salt" and "wit," so maybe there was a mix-up sometime during the last 2,000 years.

The more recent phrase "to take something with a pinch of salt," dates back to F. R. Cowell's Cicero & the Roman Republic (1948):

"A more critical spirit slowly developed, so that Cicero and his friends took more than the proverbial pinch of salt before swallowing everything written by these earlier authors."

While I usually prefer things in their original, unaltered states, I certainly approve of this variation for reasons that you can probably guess (hint: it has to do with how much salt we're dealing with).