Loading page
say it: SAY-lee-uhnt
salient is an adjective and noun meaning "having a quality that thrusts itself into attention". It carries 4 recorded senses.
having a quality that thrusts itself into attention
“an outstanding fact of our time is that nations poisoned by anti semitism proved less fortunate in regard to their own freedom”
“a new theory is the most prominent feature of the book”
“salient traits”
“a spectacular rise in prices”
“a striking thing about Picadilly Circus is the statue of Eros in the center”
“a striking resemblance between parent and child”
(of angles) pointing outward at an angle of less than 180 degrees
(military) the part of the line of battle that projects closest to the enemy
military
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for salient come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.