worth one's salt

English

WOTD – 10 July 2020

Etymology

From the Ancient Roman practice of paying soldiers a salārium or wage with which to buy salt.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɜːθ wʌnz ˈsɒlt/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈwɝθ wʌnz ˈsɔlt/, /-sɑlt/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Audio (General Australian):

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Adjective

worth one's salt (not comparable)

1. (idiomatic) Adept or competent, especially at one's occupation.

   Synonym: worth one's weight in salt

   Any doctor worth their salt should be able to correctly diagnose the illness.

   • 1786, A[lexander] Dalrymple, A Fair State of the Case between the East India Company and the Owners of Ships Now in Their Service. […], London: Printed by George Bigg [...]; and sold by J. Sewell, […], →OCLC, pages 46–47:

     [T]he encouragement for Shipwrights continues great at the Capital; to which all young People are naturally deſirous to come, whenever they fancy their abilities would diſtinguiſh them, or find a deſire to improve themſelves in their profeſſion; which two claſſes comprehend all the Shipwrights that will ever be worth their salt!

   • 1857, [Thomas Hughes], “The Fight”, in Tom Brown’s School Days. […], Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, part II, pages 312–313:

     Everyone who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickedness in high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who will not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them.

   • 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Narrative Continued by the Doctor: End of the First Day’s Fighting”, in Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC, part IV (The Stockade), page 142:

     It did all our hearts good to see him spit in his hand, knit his brows, and make the blade sing through the air. It was plain from every line of his body that our new hand was worth his salt.

   • 1966 May, Arnold H. Maremont, “Public Relations—the Tail that Wags the Dog?”, in Michigan Business Review, volume XVIII, number 3, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Michigan, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 11, column 1:

     Every executive worth his salt has his own private charity, ranging all the way from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to raising money for organizations concerned with better sex education in our public schools.

   • 2000, Ronald W. Maris, Alan L[ee] Berman, Morton M. Silverman [et al.], “The Empirical Foundations of Suicidology”, in Comprehensive Textbook of Suicidology, New York, N.Y., London: Guilford Press, →ISBN, part I (Foundations of Suicidology), page 62:

     Surely any "science" worth its salt ought to try to be true to its name and be as objective as it can, make careful measurements, count something.

   • 2010 March, Wendy Wax, Magnolia Wednesdays, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Books, →ISBN, page 400:

     Those were the kinds of story elements that any network would pay big bucks for, that any investigative journalist worth her salt would kill for. This story was an automatic ticket back to the top of network news.

   • 2018 December 12, Charles Bramesco, “A Spoonful of Nostalgia Helps the Calculated Mary Poppins Returns Go Down”, in The A.V. Club‎^[2], archived from the original on 24 May 2019:

     She does the same thing as any parent worth their salt, and gets rambunctious youngsters engaged in daily drudgeries by refashioning the quotidian as adventure.

   • 2021 January 13, Christian Wolmar, “Read all about London's Cathedrals of Steam”, in RAIL, issue 922, page 62:

     Every rail company worth its salt wanted to connect with London. Interestingly, it was largely that way around - provincial entrepreneurs wanting to connect with the capital, rather than London capitalists seeking to spread outwards.

Related terms

• not worth salt

Translations

adept or competent

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 勝任／胜任 (zh) (shèngrèn)

• Danish: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: palkkansa arvoinen
• French: digne de ce nom (fr)
• Italian: please add this translation if you can
• Japanese: 有能 (ja) (yūnō)
• Latin: please add this translation if you can
• Polish: wart swojej ceny
• Portuguese: please add this translation if you can
• Romanian: please add this translation if you can
• Russian: знающий своё дело (znajuščij svojó delo), компетентный (ru) (kompetentnyj), сведущий (ru) (sveduščij)
• Scots: wirth saut til his kail
• Spanish: please add this translation if you can

Further reading

• “(to be) worth one’s salt” under “salt, n.¹”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909.
• “worth one's salt, phrase”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.