salve
1 Americannoun
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salves
plural
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a medicinal ointment for healing or relieving wounds and sores.
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anything that soothes, mollifies, or relieves.
verb (used with object)
verb (used with or without object)
interjection
noun
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an ointment for wounds, sores, etc
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anything that heals or soothes
verb
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to apply salve to (a wound, sore, etc)
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to soothe, comfort, or appease
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of salve1
First recorded before 900; Middle English noun salve, salwe, salf(e), Old English sealf, salf; cognate with German Salbe “ointment, salve,” Sanskrit sarpís “melted butter, fat”; verb derivative of the noun
Origin of salve2
First recorded in 1700–10; back formation from salvage
Origin of salve3
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English, from Latin salvē! literally, “be in good health!”; cf. salute
Explanation
A salve is something that soothes. You can use an ointment as a salve for an itchy rash, or maybe your kind words can act as a salve to comfort a heartsick friend. In some parts of the world, people pronounce salve the way it's spelled, but in the U.S. the correct pronunciation has a silent L. You can use this word for things that make people feel better — not just ointment: "A hot cup of tea is a salve for me." And you can also use it as a verb: "The nurse will salve your wounds now." Salve comes from a Proto-Indo-European root that means "fat" or "butter."
Vocabulary lists containing salve
Much Ado About Nothing
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The Diary of a Young Girl
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Fallen Angels
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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:
Stubbornly high gas prices might be a salve, though.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2026
Drinks offer a clear bridge between the desire to buy a little treat and to not spend too much in one go, the perfect recession-fueled nihilism salve.
From Slate ● Aug. 14, 2026
But these interventions appear to be no salve for investors.
From Barron's ● May 27, 2026
The Lakers limped painfully into the playoffs Saturday night only to delightfully discover a miracle salve.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 19, 2026
Which is also why I don’t use any of my herbal health salve in the morning.
From "The Wrong Way Home" by Kate O’Shaughnessy
That feel especially valid at a time when we have plenty of shoppable salves to soothe midlife crisis ego death in whatever forms that it takes.
From Salon ● Aug. 4, 2026
Robinson ordered bandages, dressings, salves and creams online, but it was clear Dwelaniyah was in agony.
From BBC ● Mar. 21, 2024
For topical preparations, Extracts are incorporated into many skin products: soaps, creams, ointments, salves, and lotions with various concentrations of calendula.
From National Geographic ● Feb. 7, 2024
Others swear by all manner of salves and lotions crafted with beeswax and grape seed oil.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2021
Soon creditors began appearing at the pharmacy demanding repayment of mortgages secured by the store’s furnishings and its stock of salves and ointments and other goods.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
Any spectators feeling short-changed would have been salved by Hatton v Flint, a high-energy and bruising encounter.
From BBC ● Oct. 26, 2024
If paper could have salved our wounds, we would have been healed.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 5, 2021
After Gore’s defeat, Klain salved his wounds in classic Washington fashion: by making tons of cash.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 18, 2021
The area would obviously be free territory if it ever joined the American Union, so northern Democrats salved their discomfort over Texas with the belligerent chant “fifty-four forty or fight!”
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
All the time they were to go on bleeding, turn about, until the best knight in the world had tended them and salved them with his hands.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
As much as “Good Vibrations” is about Terri, its ultimate hero might be music itself, in whose saving, salving power he believes unwaveringly.
From New York Times ● Jun. 21, 2023
The spending tsunami, though good news for an economy still salving the financial wounds of the coronavirus, underscores how the wealthy can propel economic recoveries.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 18, 2021
In the Seven Years’ War, Britain and Spain had taken France’s American empire, so American independence could even the score by salving French pride and injuring British commerce.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
Maybe when dad left it was so painful that I ended up salving the wound with memories, to protect myself from the first time in my life I realized that dad might not come back.
From Salon ● May 21, 2017
I wondered if the world outside was so bad for us that we had to counter it among ourselves by salving one another with kindness.
From "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
