salty
Americanadjective
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racy or coarse.
salty humor.
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of the sea, sailing, or life at sea.
salty tales of adventure on the high seas.
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Slang. (especially of a sailor) toughened by experience.
proud and salty Marines.
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Slang. angry, upset, or hostile, especially due to embarrassment or failure.
He gets all salty whenever he loses.
adjective
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of, tasting of, or containing salt
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(esp of humour) sharp; piquant
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relating to life at sea
Usage
What else does salty mean? Salty is a slang term for irritated, angry, or resentful, especially as a result of losing or being slighted. This sense of salty originates in and was popularized by Black English.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of salty
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English; see origin at salt 1, -y 1
Explanation
Potato chips and sea captains are salty. Salty can mean literally covered in salt like those delicious chips, or just crotchety, like a foul-mouthed skipper. You can't drink sea water because it's so salty — but it may be hard for you to eat certain foods when they're not salty enough. Colloquially, you can use this adjective to mean "down-to-earth," "aggressive," or "exciting." So for example you could describe a movie pirate who's tough and blunt-spoken as salty. The "exciting or provocative" meaning dates from the 1860s, from the sense of "giving life or strong flavor."
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.
See Examples For:
It’s both salty and sweet, without feeling overpowering on either end of the flavor scale.
From Salon ● Jul. 20, 2026
Each one has a crisp, dramatically puffed border surrounding a baked egg, with salty pancetta, sharp pecorino and enough black pepper to send the whole thing in a cacio e pepe direction.
From Salon ● Jul. 20, 2026
"It kind of sucks and I do get a little salty seeing all this extra AI money squeeze everyone else out."
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026
To survive, Agarwal says she and her husband gulp down glasses of sweet and salty lemonade from another vendor.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026
There was a slab of cream-colored dried fish, delicious and so salty it was like eating the sea itself.
From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell
Whether your team chicken, shrimp, or beef, the individual packets are highly concentrated and on the saltier side.
From Salon ● Jul. 19, 2026
As warm, salty surface water travels north through the Atlantic, evaporation makes it saltier.
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026
Or it could simply be more evidence that New Yorkers are saltier than average sports fans.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2025
The lake, which is about two and a half times saltier than the ocean, is located at the base of the Eastern Sierra, where the mountains meet the Great Basin Desert.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2025
Comes out a little saltier than I intended, but whatever.
From "Odd One Out" by Nic Stone
For instance, McDonald's chicken nuggets are saltiest in the U.S. and even American Coke contains salt, an ingredient it lacks in other countries.
From Salon ● Mar. 12, 2024
The saltiest language — some of it referring to Heard — was silenced on Court TV, which is broadcasting the trial live.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 21, 2022
With that goal in mind, Pugh, Manda and Andrea Gibbs, the local agriculture agent for North Carolina Cooperative Extension, convened at the edge of Pugh’s saltiest field on a recent blustery afternoon.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 1, 2019
That is why, to me, swimming will always mean swimming in the Pacific, in water that can only be described in extremes: the bluest, the saltiest, the wildest, the least predictable.
From New York Times ● Feb. 4, 2016
Though written almost entirely in an Italian village it has been justly described by an able critic as "one of the saltiest stories ever published."
From The Visionary Pictures From Nordland by Muir, Jessie
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.
