Worth one’s salt

Roman soldiers were paid with salt, not money. These days, if someone is worth their salt, they are competent and doing a good job.
I only want to hire someone competent to do the job.
I won’t pay them if they’re not worth their salt.

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Phrase: Worth your salt

Salt has been vital throughout history.

Roman soldiers were not paid with money; they were paid with salt.

If I can go off on a bit of a tangent, salt is where the word salary originates.

The Latin for salt is salarius.

You can already see that salarius looks similar to salary.

As I mentioned earlier, Roman soldiers were paid with salt.

If you were worth your salt, then you were worth the salary that you earned.

In other words, you worked hard, were useful and therefore deserve the salary that your employer is going to pay you.


These days, if someone is worth their salt, then they are competent and doing a good job.


This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).  

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 78.  

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100. 



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