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Someone I know was talking about 600gb hard drives and his description of the cost was "salty". When I asked him to clarify, he told me it meant that they were expensive. I have searched and can't find any reference to it being used that way. Where does that definition originate? Is it a regionalism?

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In Turkish, we use 'Tuzlu' which means salty. – Mehper C. Palavuzlar Sep 7 '11 at 14:27
There are a couple of references on urbandictionary.com that refer to salty as being something that is "unreasonably/extremely expensive but possibly desirable" - but they have too few and largely negative votes to be counted as fact IMO. – w3d Sep 7 '11 at 14:36
Coincidentally, I happened to say last night that at under £50, 1.5tb (1500gb) drives are now cheap as chips. Someone else said that if global food prices keep rising, pretty soon they'll be cheaper than chips. :) – FumbleFingers Sep 7 '11 at 16:05

3 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

The opposite of "salty" in this context would be "sweet" (for the buyer), that is cheap.

"Salty" (especially in excess), implies "unpleasant," which (for a buyer) in turn implies "expensive."

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+1 for noting the contextually-suitable antonym sweet, though I don't think either word is used very often in relation to prices (sweet at least somewhat more, perhaps). There's also sting[ing] used in relation to high prices, which could echo rubbing salt in the wound – FumbleFingers Sep 7 '11 at 15:23
I believe these are "figures of speech," as opposed to "accepted" English usage. – Tom Au Sep 7 '11 at 15:49
I believe "figures of speech" and "accepted usage" are not in any meaningful sense mutually exclusive. Personally I do not consider "accepted usage" even excludes slang or profanity, though others may take issue with that. Not that I ever mentioned "accepted usage" - I simply said that neither of these metaphorical usages are particularly common. – FumbleFingers Sep 7 '11 at 15:58
up vote 1 down vote

The most common slang meaning closely related to OP's example is salty = crude, [slightly] pornographic. The high, excessive meaning intended here is very similar, but I think this usage is not widespread.

I haven't looked anything up, but I imagine that in earlier times before widespread refrigeration, canning, etc., it would be quite common for foodstuffs to be excessively salty. This would quite naturally lead to a strong association between the word salty and the concept of excess.

Possibly fanciful, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that children's well-known aversion to highly-flavoured foods might have encouraged the salty = smutty sense (not suitable for the young ones).

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up vote 1 down vote

I've never heard this in a modern context, but in that past, salt used to be a very valuable mineral (because of it's abilities to preserve food), so maybe to say something is "salty" is to say it is valuable, like salt, though this might have made more sense hundreds of years ago.

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