wtf does
"salt of the earth"
have an almost entirely different meaning than
"salting the earth"
salt of the earth -good, decent person
salting the earth - bad, ruining something
I'm vaguely aware of how important salt was historically
but it's still super confusing as someone who just noticed this
I literally thought they meant the same thing
@dragonmagic it's not exactly unique, while it's a much more "crude" example: calling something "shit" is clearly expressing disgust or extreme dislike towards that thing, but saying something is " *the* shit" generally means one is calling that thing particularly good.
As far as the salt goes, Id assumed salt of the earth simply referred to rock salt os such being valuable, but wikipedia seems to suggest it's religious in origin? Like, "you improve the earth like salt improves food", I guess?
@dragonmagic salting the earth is a bit more obvious, since salt buildup kills plants, dumping salt on someone's field is obviously an attack, trying to destroy the ability for that land to support people. Though looking it up again makes it seem that it was usually just a bit of salt used as a ritual to try to curse a land, not using enough salt to actually have the effect of making it unusable. Maybe ancient people understood the effect but didn't have enough salt to do it for real?
@CarbonIceDragon huh, that's pretty interesting, I appreciate the research and thought put into this reply 
