salve.
An ointment, cream, or balm with soothing, healing, or calming effects.
Meaning & usage
An ointment, cream, or balm with soothing, healing, or calming effects.
Any remedy or action that soothes or heals.
Your forgiveness was a salve to my conscience and a balm to my wounded ego.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English salve, from Old English sealf, from Proto-West Germanic *salbu, from Proto-Germanic *salbō, from Proto-Indo-European *solp-éh₂, from *selp- (“salve, ointment”). Cognates Cognate with Middle Low German salve (Danish salve, Dutch zalf), Old High German salba (German Salbe), Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌻𐌱𐍉𐌽𐍃 (salbōns), Albanian gjalpë (“butter”), Sanskrit सर्पिस् (sarpís), Ancient Greek ἔλπος (élpos).
To calm or assuage.
To heal by applications or medicaments; to apply salve to; to anoint.
To heal; to remedy; to cure; to make good.
To salvage.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *selp-der. Proto-Indo-European *solp-éh₂ Proto-Germanic *salbō Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ti Proto-Germanic *-ōną Proto-Germanic *salbōną Proto-West Germanic *salbōn Old English sealfian Middle English salven English salve From Old English sealfian, from Proto-West Germanic *salbōn, from Proto-Germanic *salbōną, from *salbō (whence salve (noun)).
To save (the appearances or the phenomena); to explain (a celestial phenomenon); to account for (the apparent motions of the celestial bodies).
To resolve (a difficulty); to refute (an objection); to harmonize (an apparent contradiction).
To explain away; to mitigate; to excuse.
Where this word comes from
From Latin salvō (“to save”).
Hail; a greeting.
Where this word comes from
From Latin salvē. The verb is from the interjection.
To say “salve” to; to greet; to salute.
Where this word comes from
From Latin salvē. The verb is from the interjection.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.