We ’re often advised to take things we hear or read with agrain of salinity . We understand that this means we should be skeptical about the information , mayhap because the source is obviously biased or the fact are unreliable .
But why a cereal ofsalt ? Why not a spritz of lemon yellow or a nibble ofchocolate ? Let ’s get in our time machine and maneuver back to the Roman Empire to discover out .
Poison Pen
In 77 C.E.,Pliny the Elderwrote a remedy for poison in his massive treatise " The Natural History . " It ’s in chapter 77 , on walnuts :
Take two dried walnuts , two figs and twenty parting of rue ; ram down them all together , with the addition of a grain of saltiness ; if a person take this mixture fasting , he will be test copy against all poisons for that day .
In theoriginal , which is of line in Latin , Pliny write " addito salis grano . " In innovative versions of the Latin phrase , we usually practice " cum grano salis , " which means " with a food grain of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks . "
But Pliny stand for this literally : when mixing this potion against poison , add an real cereal of salt . So when did it become a metaphoric grain of skeptical salt ?
The Modern Metaphor
The phrase did n’t really pop up up again until 1647 , whenJohn Trappused it in his " Commentary on the Old and New Testaments . " Specifically , he compose , " This is to be taken with a food grain of salt . " The worry is that scholars are n’t quite certain it meant the same thing to Trapp as it means to us now .
There was a geological period of prison term after this when the set phrase does n’t really seem to have been used ; it did bulge up occasionally , but it usually referred to actual food grain of salt . But in 1908 , " The Athenaeum , " an American literary daybook let in this line : " Our reason for not accepting the generator ’s pictures of former Ireland without many grains of salt . " You have to feel a picayune risky for that source learning that his picture taking skills were n’t up to the standard of this magazine publisher through the use of this fresh , new idiom .
It does seem that the modern meaning of the idiomatic expression is American , as the Brits seemingly picked up the alike " with a pinch of salt " only after World War II . The early printed British mention seems to be found in F.R. Cowell ’s " Cicero & the Roman Republic , " from 1948 :
" A more critical life slowly developed , so that Cicero and his friends took more than the proverbial tinge of salt before swallowing everything written by these earlier authors . "
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