Word.ws English Dictionary

below the salt

below the salt prepositional phrase: common, vulgar; of low standing.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Common, vulgar; of low standing.
    • His fashion is not to take knowledge of him that is beneath him in clothes. He never drinks below the salt.1600 (first performance), Beniamin Ionson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Cynthias Reuels, or The Fountayne of Selfe-Loue. […]”, in The Workes of Beniamin Ionson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby...

Antonyms of below the salt

Origin of below the salt

See above the salt.

Questions about below the salt

What does below the salt mean?
Below the salt means common, vulgar; of low standing.
What part of speech is below the salt?
Below the salt is a prepositional phrase.

Words near below the salt in the dictionary

  1. below the gangway
  2. below the law
  3. below the line
  4. below the mahogany
  5. below the radar
  6. below the salt
  7. below the surface
  8. below-stairs
  9. belowdecks
  10. belowground
  11. belowness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: below the salt (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-below the salt.ogg.

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