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.
Higher PAD was observed in the default mode network, as well as in the salience network, putamen and thalamus.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 29, 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
This is along with what she called the "growing salience of nuclear weapons".
From BBC ● Feb. 4, 2026
Displacing the literary drama, which reduced contemporary life in Italy to the conventional standard of classical Rome or Athens, this new drama brought into salience local oddities and notes of provincial eccentricity.
From The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi; Volume the First by Carlo Gozzi
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