smelling salts

1. 1.

   a pungent preparation of ammonium carbonate and perfume; sniffed as a stimulant to relieve faintness

   Broaderformulation

Questions about smelling salts

What does smelling salts mean?

smelling salts means "a pungent preparation of ammonium carbonate and perfume; sniffed as a stimulant to relieve faintness".

Is smelling salts a common word?

smelling salts is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.