salt down

salt down (third-person singular simple present salts down, present participle salting down, simple past and past participle salted down) (transitive)

1. (strictly, dated) To salt (something) to slow decomposition, such as to prepare food, treat wood or preserve a corpse.
2. To salt (something).
   • 1967 February 6, “Chicago Slapped Again: Snowstorm, Bitter Cold Hit Area”, in Warren Times-Mirror and Observer, volume 1, number 271, Warren, Pa.: Central Publishing Company, →OCLC, page A-1, column 3:

     County highway crews manned their trucks to salt down the roads, but the snowfall was predited to continue until tonight.

   • 2014 March 20, Judith Felsenfeld, “The Fugitive”, in Blaustein’s Kiss: Stories, Rhinebeck, N.Y.: Epigraph Publishing Service, →ISBN, pages 123–124:

     He has been totally occupied since we sat down, margarining every inch of his roll, likewise his baked potato, salting down everything in sight.

   • 2014 August 16, Steve Vernon, “There’s Truth in Cheap Draft Beer”, in Not Just Any Old Ghost Story (Steve Vernon’s Sea Tales; 7), Stark Raven Publishing, published 2016, →ISBN, page 26:

     I sat there and watched as he carefully salted down his beer glass from the shaker on the table. “To eliminate intestinal drag,” he said, with a wry grin, just the same as he’d said every other time I’d seen him salt his draft ale.

• “salt (something) down” in Farlex Dictionary of Idioms, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2022; reproduced on Idioms and phrases, TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2025.
• “salt something down” in McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs, Chicago, Ill.: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2002, →ISBN; reproduced on Idioms and phrases, TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2025.
• “salt down” in The American Heritage Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005, →ISBN; reproduced on Idioms and phrases, TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2025.