It’s hard to turn the other way when someone offers up enticing details, but as we all know, gossip often turns out to be false or exaggerated — you might even say it should be “taken with a grain of salt.” This popular idiom is used to preface information you’re not totally confident in. For example, if Betty tells you there’s a rumor a new manager will be hired, you might cautiously repeat that information, but with a disclaimer to “take it with a grain of salt.” The expression also can be used in more formal contexts, such as, “The data seems skewed, so take these results with a grain of salt.” The intention remains the same: The statement has a degree of doubt.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an early recorded instance of this phrase is seen in J. Trapp’s mid-17th-century Commentary on Epistles and Revelation: “This is to be taken with a grain of salt.” But the expression is centuries older than that, originating from the Latin phrase cum grano salis, of the same meaning.
One prevailing origin story posits that Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder was the source of the earliest version of the Latin phrase, written in his Naturalis Historia (77 CE). An excerpt of the translated text, which allegedly describes a recipe for an antidote to poison, reads: “Take two dried walnuts, two figs, and twenty leaves of rue; pound them all together, with the addition of a grain of salt; if a person takes this mixture fasting, he will be proof against all poisons for that day.” Some historians suggest that Pliny believed taking the mixture with a grain of salt would mitigate the effects of the potentially unpleasant concoction.
The exact phrase Pliny used, addito salis grano (“after having added a grain of salt”), became cum grano salis (“with a grain of salt”) after being translated into modern European languages. However, the leap from the literal ingesting of salt to the contemporary metaphor is fuzzy. Like most metaphors, it was probably a natural progression. Just as Pliny’s antidote called for salt to lessen the effects of something questionable, we now take words “with a grain of salt” when they come from dubious sources.
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