Word.ws English Dictionary

with a grain of salt

with a grain of salt adverb: with a little common sense and skepticism.

Adverb

with a grain of salt (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) With a little common sense and skepticism.
    • I take anything I read on the Internet with a grain of salt.
    • In it, police laid out list of biographical factoids about BTK and urged residents to read it with a grain of salt. Releasing a list of his “claims,” they reasoned, might allow someone, somewhere to make a connection that police couldn't hope to.2008, John Douglas, Johnny Dodd, Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN

Origin of with a grain of salt

Calque of Latin cum grānō salis , literally with a grain of salt, figuratively with a bit of common sense (from Pliny’s Pompey’s discovery of an antidote against poison to be taken with a grain of salt).

Questions about with a grain of salt

What does with a grain of salt mean?
With a grain of salt means with a little common sense and skepticism.
What part of speech is with a grain of salt?
With a grain of salt is an adverb.

Words near with a grain of salt in the dictionary

  1. with
  2. with 'bated breath
  3. with a bang
  4. with a bullet
  5. with a bump
  6. with a grain of salt
  7. with a high arm
  8. with a high hand
  9. with a hook
  10. with a quickness
  11. with a thumb up one's bum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: with a grain of 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-with a grain of salt.ogg.

Cite this entry: “with a grain of salt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/with_a_grain_of_salt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.