salient means worthy of note; pertinent or relevant. It carries an Arena rating of 1655, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, salient ranks #149 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #320 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #356 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #494 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words.
salient is pronounced /ˈseɪ.li.ənt/.
Why “salient” is a great word
Most noticeable or important; prominent, or projecting outward like a leap. From Latin salientem, accusative of saliens ("leaping, springing"), present participle of salire ("to leap"), the modern sense of "prominent" derives from the 17th-century phrase 'salient point', a calque of Latin 'punctum saliens' (the leaping point), used by Aristotle to describe the apparent motion of the embryonic heart. Unlike "prominent," which suggests standing out to be seen, or "conspicuous," which stresses being unavoidably obvious, "salient" implies an idea or feature that leaps forward to claim the mind's attention through sheer relevance. It is the single contradictory fact in a witness's testimony, the jut of a coastal fortification into enemy lines, the one red thread in a tapestry of grey—a quality that compels not by mere visibility, but by the quiet force of its significance, refusing to stay flat, springing forth and demanding to be known.
Etymology
The heraldic sense “leaping” and the sense “projecting outward” are borrowed from Latin salientem, the accusative form of saliēns (“springing, leaping”) (whence -ent), present participle of saliō (“leap, spring”, verb). The senses “prominent” and “pertinent” are relatively recent, and derive from the phrase salient point, which is a calque of the Latin punctum saliēns, a translation of Aristotle's term for the embryonal heart visible in (opened) eggs, which he thought seemed to move already. Compare also the German calque der springende Punkt.
adj
- Worthy of note; pertinent or relevant.e.g.“The article is not exhaustive, but it covers the salient points pretty well.”
- Prominent; conspicuous.e.g.“Warning me that many of the street signs were down, the youth drew for my benefit a rough but ample and painstaking sketch map of the town's salient features.” — 1936, H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth:
- Depicted in a leaping posture.e.g.“a lion salient”
- Projecting outwards, pointing outwards.e.g.“a salient angle”
- Moving by leaps or springs; jumping.e.g.“frogs and salient animals” — 1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC:
- Shooting or springing out; projecting.
- Denoting any angle less than two right angles.
noun
- An outwardly projecting part of a fortification, trench system, or line of defense.e.g.“On April 26 the First Division had gone into the line in the Montdidier salient on the Picardy battlefront.” — 1919, “General Pershing's Story”, in Americans Defending Democracy: Our Soldiers' Own Stories, World's War Stories, Inc., page 9:
- A protrusion of the administrative borders of a geopolitical entity, such as a subnational entity or a sovereign state into another geopolitical entity, generally of the same administrative level.
- An overall-convex, protruding section of a sinuous fold and thrust belt, thrust sheet, or a single thrust fault, caused by one or more of: deformation (folding and faulting) of strata and geologic structures during orogenesis, differences in the angle of critical taper during orogenesis, or differing erosional level of the present geomorphological surface.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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