Meaning & use
salience
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Meanings
noununcountable
The quality of standing out as especially noticeable or important.
Grammar: Uncountable and usually followed by of: the salience of the issue.
Patterns
- the salience of something
- gain salience
- lose salience
The salience of climate change has grown in recent years.
The bright poster increased the salience of the safety message.
The issue lost salience once the election was over.
noununcountabletechnical
In psychology and marketing, the degree to which something grabs attention compared with its surroundings.
Grammar: A technical sense in research writing: visual salience.
Patterns
- visual salience
- perceptual salience
The study measured the visual salience of each logo.
Bold color raises the perceptual salience of a button on a page.
Researchers compared the salience of different warning signs.
Common combinations
- political salience
- Housing has gained political salience this year.
- gain salience
- The topic gained salience after the report.
- lose salience
- Old scandals soon lose salience.
- visual salience
- Visual salience guides where the eye goes first.
- increase salience
- Repetition can increase the salience of a message.
- high salience
- The issue has high salience among young voters.
Synonyms and how they differ
- prominence
- Prominence is the general word for standing out, while salience is a more technical term used in research.
- importance
- Importance means how much something matters, whereas salience is how noticeable it is, whether or not it matters.
- conspicuousness
- Conspicuousness describes being clearly seen, usually physically, while salience also covers ideas and issues.
- prominence
- Prominence is also used of people, whereas salience is rarely used for people.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: salience or saline? salience or saliva?
salience vs saline
Saline means containing salt, as in saline solution, and has no link to the idea of being noticeable.
salience vs saliva
Saliva is the liquid in your mouth; it is only similar in spelling.
Practice
Advertisers use bright colors to increase the ____ of their message.
Choose one answer.
Salience means how much something stands out, which bright color increases. Salinity, salary and silence do not fit the meaning.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “salience”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.