Word.ws English Dictionary

salt cellar

salt cellar noun: a small open container holding salt for use in the kitchen or on a dining table.

salt cellar: a small open container holding salt for use in the kitchen or on a dining table
Image: Photo by Nick Michael, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

salt cellar (plural salt cellars)

  1. A small open container holding salt for use in the kitchen or on a dining table.
    • Soon afterwards, Biddy, Joe, and I, had a cold dinner together; but we dined in the best parlour, not in the old kitchen, and Joe was so exceedingly particular what he did with his knife and fork and the saltcellar and what not, that there was great restraint upon us.1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter XVI, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, pages 259–260
    • And she had no love for the sea specially, regarding all winds as nuisances excepting such as had been raised by her own efforts, and thinking that salt from a saltcellar was more convenient than that brought to her on the breezes.c. 1867, Anthony Trollope, chapter XXVII, in The Claverings
  2. (UK) Synonym of salt shaker (“a closed container with perforated lid for sprinkling salt”).
    Synonyms:
    salt shaker, cellar, salt

salt cellar meaning in Persian

salt cellar in Persian

container holding salt for use in the kitchen or on a dining table
نمکدان namakdân

Synonyms of salt cellar

Forms of salt cellar

pluralsalt cellars
alternative formsaltcellar
alternative formsalt-cellar

Origin of salt cellar

From salt + cellar, from 15th Century Middle English saler, from Middle French salier, from Latin salārius (“relating to salt”), from Latin sāl (“salt”). Modified based on originally unrelated English cellar.

Questions about salt cellar

What does salt cellar mean?
Salt cellar means a small open container holding salt for use in the kitchen or on a dining table.
What is salt cellar in Persian?
Salt cellar in Persian is نمکدان (namakdân). See Salt cellar meaning in Persian.
What part of speech is salt cellar?
Salt cellar is a noun.
What is the plural of salt cellar?
The plural of salt cellar is salt cellars.

Words near salt cellar in the dictionary

  1. salt cave
  2. salt caves
  3. Salt Cay
  4. salt cedar
  5. salt cedars
  6. salt cellar
  7. salt cellars
  8. salt chuck
  9. salt chucks
  10. salt clay
  11. Salt Coates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: salt cellar (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-salt cellar.wav.

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