Etymology
Origin of salience
Explanation
Salience means importance. Your birthday will always be a date that jumps out at you with a lot of salience or importance. Salience comes from the Latin salire, meaning "to leap." Something with salience leaps out at you because it is unique or special in some way. This could be an issue — like health care reform, or a day — like 9/11, or even something someone said — like the State of the Union address. If it jumps out at you as remarkable or special, it's characterized by a quality of salience.
Vocabulary lists containing salience
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Prediction-market firms achieved massive growth and cultural salience in the U.S. through major events like the presidential election and Super Bowl.
From Barron's ● Jun. 11, 2026
And it remains to be seen if these attacks — and saying the word “transgender” over and over again — will have the same salience it has had in the past.
From Salon ● Jun. 2, 2026
Economists have found that round-number prices for retail items have salience with consumers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 31, 2026
Lizzie O’Leary: Let’s talk about the salience engine and storytelling platform on which you primarily exist, which is YouTube.
From Slate ● Mar. 22, 2026
How foreign he appeared to the ardent spirit who had dominated the dark; how emptied of the heat of imagination, how worn, how dry; and even in his salience, how singularly pathetic!
From The Coast of Chance by Clarence F. Underwood
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
