Word.ws English Dictionary

saltire

Syllables: sal·tire/ˈsæl.taɪə/

saltire noun: an ordinary (geometric design) in the shape of an X. It usually occupies the entire field in which it is placed.

Noun

saltire (plural saltires)

  1. An ordinary (geometric design) in the shape of an X. It usually occupies the entire field in which it is placed.
  2. The Saint Andrew's cross, the flag of Scotland.
    • But the World Cup winning veteran's left boot was awry again, the attempt sliced horribly wide of the left upright, and the saltires were waving aloft again a moment later when a long pass in the England midfield was picked off to almost offer up a breakaway try.2011 October 1, Tom Fordyce, “Rugby World Cup 2011: England 16 – 12 Scotland”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 26 Sep 2016
    • It was early August. In the Borders, there were few signs yet of a campaign that could take Scotland out of the United Kingdom. A large Y-E-S hung in separate letters from a tree on the road from Coldstream to Kelso. There wasn't a N-O to match it, but Kelso town hall flew both the saltire and the...2014 September 16, Ian Jack, “Is this the end of Britishness?”, in The Guardian, London, archived from the original on 18 Apr 2016
  3. The Saint Patrick's Cross, the pre 1922 flag of Ireland.

Synonyms of saltire

Forms of saltire

pluralsaltires

Origin of saltire

From Middle English sawtoure, from Old French sautoir (“stile, saltire”) (compare French sautoir (“saltire”)), from sauter (“to jump, to leap”) + -oir (subject forming nouns denoting physical objects from verbs), from Latin saltāre (“to dance, to jump”) + -orium, -oria.

Words formed from saltire

Questions about saltire

What does saltire mean?
Saltire means an ordinary (geometric design) in the shape of an X. It usually occupies the entire field in which it is placed.
What part of speech is saltire?
Saltire is a noun.
How do you pronounce saltire?
Saltire is pronounced /ˈsæl.taɪə/ (UK).
What is the plural of saltire?
The plural of saltire is saltires.

Words near saltire in the dictionary

  1. salting the mine
  2. salting up
  3. saltings
  4. saltiphone
  5. saltiphones
  6. saltire
  7. saltired
  8. saltires
  9. saltirewise
  10. saltish
  11. saltishly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: saltire (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)-AcpoKrane-saltire.wav.

Cite this entry: “saltire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/saltire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.