Other forms: salves
A salve is an ointment that soothes a wound. Apply the salve, a healing salve, a salve for burns.
It is old-fashioned where cream and ointment are the modern words, and it survives in lip salve. Figuratively, a salve to the conscience is something that makes you feel better without changing what you did, and that use is now the commoner.
1nounsalveAn ointment that soothes a wound.
“She rubbed a soothing salve into the burn on her hand.”
salve is an ointment.
Old English sealf named a healing ointment, from a Germanic root. Salvage and salvation are unrelated.
Proto-Indo-European
*selp-
Proto-Indo-European
*solp-éh₂
Proto-Germanic
*salbō
Proto-West Germanic
*salbu
Old English
sealf
Middle English
salve
English, today
salve
Built 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”). 2 Cognate with Middle Low German salve (Danish salve, Dutch zalf), Old High German salba (German Salbe), Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌻𐌱𐍉𐌽𐍃, Albanian gjalpë (“butter”), Sanskrit सर्पिस्, Ancient Greek ἔλπος.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA