Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) irritated, annoyed, feeling sour, supercilious.

1925		S. Lewis Arrowsmith 132: He lay and thought about research with salty self-defensive scorn.
1936		‘Hectic Harlem’ in N.Y. Amsterdam News 8 Feb, sect. 2: SALTY. – Sarcastic, supercilious, highbrow, as ‘Don’t jump salty.’.
1938		Cab Calloway Hi De Ho 16: salty: angry, ill-tempered.
1949		N. Algren Man with the Golden Arm 251: All the good I done was to get Frankie salty back at me.
1955		‘Blackie’ Audett Rap Sheet 202: It made the prison officers pretty salty, on account of they had built up the story about the rip tides so much.
1964		H. Selby Jr Last Exit to Brooklyn 13: When his hair was once more in place it was mussed again and he got salty as hell.
1972		O. Hawkins Ghetto Sketches 38: I’m gon’ do better, Daddy [...] and then you won’t have no reason to be salty at me.
1980		J.L. Gwaltney Drylongso 62: His so-called brother in Christ was stone salty when I laid that on him.
1996		Eble Campus Sl. Mar.
2000		P. Beatty Tuff 37: You ain’t got nothing to be salty about — Ms. Nomura like my auntie.
2012		C. Eble (ed.) UNC-CH Campus Sl. 2011.
2016		usatoday.com 3 Apr. 🌐 [headline] Kristaps Porzingis was so salty after losing to a teammate in FIFA.
2019		Times Times2 3 June 3/1: Love Island: a handy glossary Salty Bitter or angry.

2. (US, also salty-ass) tough, aggressive, used of a veteran of a particular environment, e.g. a prison; also adv.

1927		B. Cormack Racket Act I: Well, we’re still salty here.
1947		(con. 1944) J.H. Burns Gallery (1948) 90: I remember that the nurses at the Sixth General Hospital were plumper and saltier than most ANC’s.
1953		L. Uris Battle Cry (1964) 291: He was trying out his Marine lingo, to show us how salty he was.
1962		T. Southern ‘Razor Fight’ in Southern (1973) 27: So he say, salty-like, he say: ‘What’s the matter with you, boy’.
1975		E. Torres Carlito’s Way 24: I always had my own table with my own crew [...] salty motherfuckers all.
1987		(con. 1967) E. Spencer Welcome to Vietnam (1989) 17: Saltiest suckers in the world, those stewards could teach a Paris waiter how to fuck with people. [Ibid.] 28: He is a civilized, macho, salty-ass Marine. John Wayne couldn’t have played it better.
1993		T. Jones Pugilist at Rest 7: The recruits were also getting pretty ‘salty’.
2002		‘Touré’ Portable Promised Land (ms.) 156: We Words (My Favorite Things) [...] Celly. Salty. Polly. Gully.
2018		CGM ‘No Porkies’ 🎵 Bitch stop moving salty.
2020		G. Krauze What They Was 143: He’s moving salty coz he’s with the newbies.

3. (US teen) a general pej., unpleasant, uncouth, crude; of language, obscene; of place. louche, racy.

1929		M. Levin Reporter 65: His eyes shone with a salty earnestness whenever he got on any such subject [i.e. sex].
1929		W. Winchell Your Broadway & Mine 3 Jan. [synd. col.] It reveals the tags of the celebrated he guided around the town’s saltier places.
1938		W. Winchell On Broadway 29 Mar. [synd. col.] An almost street brawl didn’t come off [...] Saturdawn when Playwright Charles McArthur and Ted Husing swapped some salty sass.
1941		L.A. Times 23 Mar. B14: Enlisted slang is rather salty.
1961		(con. early 1950s) J. Peacock Valhalla 345: You’re pretty goddam salty, ain’t you?
1967		E. Shepard Doom Pussy 58: Salty language has been practiced since the beginning of warfare.
1978		J. Webb Fields of Fire (1980) 228: They’re pretty damn good. A little salty, maybe.
1997–2000		Da Bomb 🌐 24: Salty: Negative attitude.
2004		(con. 1960s-70s) T. Taylor Top Fellas 29/1: Dishing out thirty pound fines for the use of salty language.
2005		J. Stahl I, Fatty 36: Pansy’d done some salty entertaining in her day.

4. of a garment, well-worn, ‘lived-in’.

1986		L. Heinemann Paco’s Story (1987) 188: [He] slips on a dark T-shirt and a pair of cutoff dungarees (scrubbed to death and plenty salty-looking).
1997–2000		College Sl. Research Project (Cal. State Poly. Uni., Pomona) 🌐 Salty (adj.) [...] 2. Messed up; not right.

5. pertaining to the sea.

2023

R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 482: ‘He has a fondness for salty shirt-liftering sea-queens, does he?’.