salt the mine

salt the mine verb: used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see salt, the, mine.

Verb

salt the mine (third-person singular simple present salts the mine, present participle salting the mine, simple past and past participle salted the mine)

Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see salt, the, mine.
- He then discovered that Lovell had salted the mine with ore from the Little Pittsburgh.1989, John Burke, The Legend of Baby Doe: The Life and Times of the Silver Queen of the West, U of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 53
- They then salted the “mine” with these gems, which the first expert dug up and brought to San Francisco.2000, Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power, Penguin Books, page 159
(broadly) To set up a confidence trick; to plant false evidence of the value of something.
- "Yes. I thought it would be a shrewd move to salt the mine." I didn't get this. She seemed to me an aunt who was talking in riddles.1954, P.G. Wodehouse, Bertie Wooster Sees It Through, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 86
- “Salting the mine. We'll salt the mine.” Egan still didn't seem to understand. “You college boys, all that training and you can't see the nose on your face. We'll plant a body.”2005, Paul Lindsay, The Big Scam: A Novel of the FBI, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 275

Historians are duty bound never to salt the mine of history by the creation of ersatz facts introduced to fulfill their preconceived ideas.2006, Steven T. Katz, Alan Rosen, Elie Wiesel, Obliged by Memory: Literature, Religion, Ethics, Syracuse University Press, →ISBN, page 64:
His rationale was the same: these were amenities that a salesperson needed to salt the mine and make the right impression on customers.2007, Ira Nottonson, Forming a Partnership : And Making It Work, Entrepreneur Press, →ISBN, page 4:

third-person singular present	salts the mine
present participle	salting the mine
past participle	salted the mine
past	salted the mine

What does salt the mine mean?: Salt the mine means used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see salt, the, mine.
How do you use salt the mine in a sentence?: Historians are duty bound never to salt the mine of history by the creation of ersatz facts introduced to fulfill their preconceived ideas.
What part of speech is salt the mine?: Salt the mine is a verb.
What is the past tense of salt the mine?: The past tense of salt the mine is salted the mine.

Adapted from Wiktionary: salt the mine (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: 2026-09-02

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