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salt-cellar

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

11 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "salt-cellar", 11-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "salt-cellar" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "salt-cellar" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

salt cellar is aEnglishnoun. It means: A small open container holding salt for use in the kitchen or on a dining table.

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Key facts for salt cellar
PropertyValue
Headwordsalt cellar
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters11
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

salt cellar is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for salt cellar is 11 letters long, classified as anoun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No misspelling variants are generated for salt cellar in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: 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. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is salt cellar, spelled S-A-L-T- -C-E-L-L-A-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    A small open container holding salt for use in the kitchen or on a dining table.
  2. 2
    Synonym of salt shaker (“a closed container with perforated lid for sprinkling salt”).

Etymology

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.

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "salt cellar"?
"salt cellar" is spelled S-A-L-T- -C-E-L-L-A-R.
What does "salt cellar" mean?
As a noun, "salt cellar" means: A small open container holding salt for use in the kitchen or on a dining table.
What is the origin of the word "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. See the full etymology section above for more details.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.