Blog Marco

I was reading a few forums about learning about "money making" schemes and gurus and one forum member advised to take their advice "with a pinch of salt." To take (advice) with a pinch of salt means: to listen to a story or an explanation with considerable doubt or to take a story and not completely believing in it and refusing to believe it is completely true. Where does this idiom come from? In Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, 77 A.D. he writes:

After the defeat of that mighty monarch, Mithridates, Gnaeus Pompeius found in his private cabinet a recipe for an antidote in his own handwriting; it was to the following effect: Take two dried walnuts, two figs, and twenty leaves of rue; pound them all together, with the addition of a grain of salt; if a person takes this mixture fasting, he will be proof against all poisons for that day.

More recently, John Trapp wrote in "Commentary on the Old and New Testaments", 1647:

"This is to be taken with a grain of salt."

You can have a look at the other results or tweak my findings from Google Books

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