Take it with a grain of salt meaning

From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishtake something with a pinch/grain of salttake something with a pinch/grain of saltinformalBELIEVE# to not completely believe what someone tells you, because you know that they do not always tell the truth  Most of what he says should be taken with a pinch of salt. → saltExamples from the Corpustake something with a pinch/grain of salt• But since he never even notices that Howard is himself Howard takes this with a pinch of salt.• I try to take everything with a grain of salt.• We took her to a psychic reader about a month ago-we take that with a grain of salt.

What are these?

To take a statement with 'a grain of salt' (or 'a pinch of salt') means to accept it while maintaining a degree of scepticism about its truth.

What's the origin of the phrase 'Take with a grain of salt'?

The idea comes from the fact that food is more easily swallowed if taken with a small amount of salt.

Pliny the Elder translated an ancient text, which some have suggested was an antidote to poison, with the words 'be taken fasting, plus a grain of salt'.

Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, 77 A.D. translates into modern English thus:

After the defeat of that mighty monarch, Mithridates, Gnaeus Pompeius found in his private cabinet a recipe for an antidote in his own handwriting; it was to the following effect: 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.

The suggestion is that injurious effects can be moderated by the taking of a grain of salt.

The figurative meaning, that is, that truth may require moderation by the notional application of 'a grain of salt', didn't enter the language until much later, no doubt influenced by classical scholars' study of Ancient Greek texts like the works of Pliny. The phrase has been in use in English since the 17th century; for example, in the English religious commentator John Trapp's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, 1647:

"This is to be taken with a grain of salt."

Quite what Trapp meant by that citation isn't entirely clear but it is possible that he wasn't intending to convey the figurative meaning we now understand by 'taken with a grain of salt'. In any case the expression didn't emerge again in print for a couple of centuries, and in America rather than England. The August 1908 edition of the US literary journal The Athenæum included this text:

Our reasons for not accepting the author's pictures of early Ireland without many grains of salt.

It may be that 'taken with a grain of salt', with the meaning that we now give to it, emerged in early 20th century America.

The 'pinch of salt' variant is more common in the UK. The earliest printed citation that I can find for it is F. R. Cowell's Cicero & the Roman Republic, 1948:

"A more critical spirit slowly developed, so that Cicero and his friends took more than the proverbial pinch of salt before swallowing everything written by these earlier authors."

We're often advised to take things we hear or read with a grain of salt. We understand that this means we should be skeptical about the information, maybe because the source is obviously biased or the facts are unreliable.

But why a grain of salt? Why not a spritz of lemon or a nibble of chocolate? Let's get in our time machine and head back to the Roman Empire to find out.

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Poison Pen

In 77 C.E., Pliny the Elder wrote 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 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.

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In the original, which is of course in Latin, Pliny wrote "addito salis grano." In modern versions of the Latin phrase, we usually use "cum grano salis," which means "with a grain of salt."

But Pliny means this literally: when mixing this potion against poison, add an actual grain of salt. So when did it become a metaphorical grain of skeptical salt?

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The Modern Metaphor

The phrase didn't really pop up again until 1647, when John Trapp used it in his "Commentary on the Old and New Testaments." Specifically, he wrote, "This is to be taken with a grain of salt." The trouble is that scholars aren't quite sure it meant the same thing to Trapp as it means to us now.

There was a period of time after this when the phrase doesn't really seem to have been used; it did pop up occasionally, but it usually referred to actual grains of salt. But in 1908, "The Athenaeum," an American literary journal included this line: "Our reasons for not accepting the author's pictures of early Ireland without many grains of salt." You have to feel a little bad for that author learning that his photography skills weren't up to the standards of this magazine through the use of this fresh, new idiom.

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It does seem that the modern meaning of the phrase is American, as the Brits seemingly picked up the similar "with a pinch of salt" only after World War II. The earliest printed British citation seems to be found in F.R. Cowell's "Cicero & the Roman Republic," from 1948:

"A more critical spirit slowly developed, so that Cicero and his friends took more than the proverbial pinch of salt before swallowing everything written by these earlier authors."

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Walnuts, figs and salt are all common today, but what exactly is rue? It's actually really common too. It's a native evergreen herb in Europe and Asia that has yellow flower clusters. It's been used to treat everything from diarrhea to ear aches. It is slightly toxic, though, so stay away from it if you're pregnant or breastfeeding.