not worth your salt
Meaning: incompetent; not deserving of wages or respect.
Language: English
Literally: not worth your salt
Category: Food & Drink
Origin: The connection between salt and wages is real but frequently overstated. The Latin salarium, the ancestor of the English word salary, is indeed related to sal, salt — but the popular claim that Roman soldiers were paid in salt goes well beyond what the evidence supports, and historians more often read salarium as an allowance for buying salt, or as connected to the salt roads and the trade the army protected. What is not in doubt is why salt was valuable enough to sit at the root of the word at all: before refrigeration it was the only reliable means of preserving food, which made it a strategic commodity rather than a seasoning. The English phrase itself is nineteenth-century, appearing in print by the 1830s.
More idioms — Food & Drink
- bring home the bacon — to provide income; to succeed in earning money.
- a storm in a teacup — excessive fuss over something trivial; tempest in a teapot.
- cry over spilled milk — to regret something past; useless to grieve over unchangeable events.
- hard pill to swallow — difficult to accept; unpleasant truth or reality.
- Hair of the dog — A morning drink taken to cure a hangover.
- Das ist mir Wurst — I couldn't care less either way.
More English idioms
- get your ducks in a row — to organize yourself; to prepare systematically.
- in a pig's eye — absolutely not; never; expressing strong disagreement.
- stick your oar in — to interfere in someone else's affairs; to meddle.
- lower your guard — to relax defenses; to become vulnerable.
- like a fish out of water — uncomfortable or awkward in a situation; out of one's element.
- come hell or high water — no matter what obstacles arise; with absolute determination.
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