salad
/ˈsæl.əd/ noun
Forms salads sallet
- noun A food consisting principally of raw vegetables (especially greens, e.g. lettuce), other savoury ingredients (typically cooked), fruit, or confectionary; often involving two or more such ingredients mixed together, with larger items cut or torn into small pieces, and usually with a dressing or binding; usually served cold or at room temperature, as a dish or savoury sandwich filling. “We'd like a couple of cheese salads and two Pepsis, please.”
- noun One or more raw vegetables of the kind used in salads; typically greens (especially lettuce). “sandwiches comprising a meat, a cheese, a salad, and a condiment”
- noun (idiomatic) Any mixture of different things. “word salad”
Etymology
From Middle English salade, from Old French salade, borrowed from Northern Italian salada, salata (compare insalata), from Vulgar Latin *salāta, from *salāre, from Latin saliō, from sal (“salt”). Vegetables were seasoned with brine or salty oil-and-vinegar dressings during Roman times.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A preparation of vegetables, as lettuce, celery, water cress, onions, etc., usually dressed with salt, vinegar, oil, and spice, and eaten for giving a relish to other food; as, lettuce salad; tomato salad, etc. Leaves eaten raw termed salad. I. Watts.
- noun A dish composed of chopped meat or fish, esp. chicken or lobster, mixed with lettuce or other vegetables, and seasoned with oil, vinegar, mustard, and other condiments; as, chicken salad; lobster salad. Salad burnet (Bot.), the common burnet (Poterium Sanguisorba), sometimes eaten as a salad in Italy.
Etymology [F. salade, OIt. salata, It. insalata, fr. salare to salt, fr. L. sal salt. See Salt, and cf. Slaw.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “salad”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details