I chose the word skeptical because I was wondering where the phrase “to take something with a grain of salt” came from.

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Of course if you are told to take something with a grain of salt it means that whatever information you are being given should be viewed with skepticism. You should question its accuracy before accepting it.

I’ll start with the word skeptical and sprinkle the salt later.

William Shakespeare hadn’t yet become a teenager when the word skeptic appeared in English in 1575.

It may have arrived from French but this was a time in the development of English when people were pulling words directly from Latin quite freely. So it may have been a direct Latin transplant.

In either case its parent word before Latin is thought to have been skeptikos from Greek meaning “thoughtful” but itself built on the Indo-European root spec.

When you are thoughtful you metaphorically look at an idea from different angles and that’s how this root that means “look” (and is the grandparent of words like spectacles and the scope part of telescope) came to be a part of a word that means to be “doubtful” or “questioning.”

Many of the etymologies I saw make reference to someone called Pyrrho of Elis who lived about 2,300 years ago and is seen as originating a skeptical philosophy.

He must have been a very annoying person because he saw it as his duty not only to play devil’s advocate for any statement of fact presented to him, but to teach others to do it as well.

So much for skepticism.

What about taking things with a grain of salt?

This expression isn’t quite as old as skepticism but it comes pretty close. The story comes from Pliny the Elder almost 2,000 years ago.

The Latin original was cum grano salis and applied not to skepticism but to an antidote to poison. Supposedly the Roman General Pompey had discovered some antidote and part of the recipe was that it be taken with a grain of salt.

We don’t know if Pliny or Pompey or some later person was skeptical of this as effective protection against poison. In any case the phrase didn’t appear in English until 1647 and by then had adopted its skeptical meaning.

In 2001 the Random House Word Maven expressed the opinion that this “skeptical” meaning likely had developed independent of whether Pliny was doubtful. Instead speakers invited their listeners to improve the palatability of a doubtful story by adding a little salt, as they might to food.