A substance, usually in the form of small white crystals (sodium chloride), with a sharp tangy taste that is used to season or preserve food comes to us from Latin sal, which evolved into French sel, Italian sale, Spanish sal, and Romanian sare.

It has also contributed an enormous range of vocabulary to English, including salad, salary, saline, sauce, saucer, and sausage. Its Germanic descendant was "salt", which produced Swedish, Danish, and English "salt", and Dutch "zout".

The North American Porcupine and Its Need for Salt

• These vegetarians find an ample supply of staple calories from plants.
• Why are these modest creatures, amply fed on wild bush and tree, regarded as pests? Because they now gnaw and damage much human property near or in the woods.
• Whatever salty hands have touched, from ax handles to discarded wrappings, becomes the target of their needful gnawing.
• The most common attraction for porcupines is the plywood in unattended outbuildings.

• The curing compound used in plywood is sodium nitrate; so porcupines chew deligently at wooden walls for that scant, unseen prize.
• Control experiments have shown that they seek the sodium ion only, not potassium, or other ions.
• Two intrinsic systems set animal and plant life apart; namely, the muscles that power locomotion, and the intricate nerve network that controls the organism, including the muscle fibers themselves.
• Sodium is an indispensable part of nerve and muscle function.
• Green plants have neither nerves nor muscles; so, lacking these, generally they have little use for sodium, over the long or short term.
• Except for special saline plants, vegetation has no need for salt; however, they must have sodium's sister atom, potassium.

The history of salt and its impact on all living creatures.

Table salt mixed with a minute amount of sodium iodide or iodate, with the purpose of helping to reduce the chance of iodine deficiency in humans.

Iodine deficiency commonly leads to thyroid gland problems, specifically goiter, or an abnormally enlarged thyroid gland which may result from under-production, or over-production, of hormone or from a deficiency of iodine in the diet.

Existing in haloid soils that have a high salt content and concentrated solutions.

Living or dwelling in salt marshes.

Any of the various salts of the rare-earth elements from the lanthanide series; especially, a mixture derived from the mineral monazite (a reddish brown phosphate mineral which contains cerium, lanthanum, and some thorium).

A cavern in an underground salt formation that is created in a commercial mining operation through the injection of fresh water and the removal of the salt in solution.

Some of these caverns are then used to store hydrocarbons; such as, crude oil and natural gas; or oil field wastes; such as, drilling fluids.

A dome or anticlinal fold (inclining downward on both sides from a median line or axis, as a fold of rock strata) originating from a thick bed of salt up to five miles deep below the earth's surface.

The domes push their way up through more brittle overlying rocks, are roughly circular, and average up to one to two miles in diameter. The tops of these domes can be commercially mined for salt.

A solar pond that consists of three main layers; the top one is near ambient temperature and has low salt content, while the bottom one is very hot and salty and is lined with a dark-colored material.

The middle (gradient) zone acts as a transparent insulator, permitting sunlight to be trapped in the bottom layer (from which useful heat is withdrawn).

This middle layer, which increases in brine density with depth, counteracts the tendency of the warmer water below to rise to the surface and lose heat in the air.

A waste deposit of salts resulting from an industrial process; for example, aluminum manufacturing, that constitutes a hazardous waste.

A bored or driven well from which brine is obtained;.

Such wells were an early source of oil in the United States oil industry.

Acute vomiting, dehydration, hypertension, and sudden death as a result of the acute loss of sodium which may be caused by adrenal hyperplasia, salt-losing nephritis, or gastrointestinal disease.