Saltless

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Lacking or containing no salt; without the addition of sodium chloride
2. Devoid of salt, indicating the absence or removal of sodium chloride in food or other substances
3. Characterized by a complete lack of salt, referring to something that has no sodium chloride content whatsoever

Etymology: Saltless is a plain formation: the adjective "salt" with the suffix "-less," which means "without." The suffix traces back through Middle English "-les" to Old English "-lēas," meaning "free from" or "lacking," and it has been attached to nouns for centuries to produce adjectives like "careless" and "fearless." Adding it to "salt" yields a word meaning simply having no salt in it. The root noun is older and more tangled. English "salt" comes from Old English "sealt," which descends from a Proto-Germanic word, and it is related to the Latin "sal," the source of "salary" in the Roman sense of money paid for salt. Those two forms share an ancestor in Proto-Indo-European, a language reconstructed by linguists rather than recorded in writing.

Synonyms: bland, tasteless, insipid, flat

Antonyms: salty, flavored