salt throwing
Superstitious warding gesture
Salt throwing is the practice of tossing salt, usually over the left shoulder, to ward off bad luck or evil spirits.
The superstition holds that spilling salt invites misfortune, and throwing some counteracts it: She spilled the salt and immediately threw a pinch over her shoulder.
The gesture appears in contexts ranging from genuine folk belief to casual habit to ironic performance.
- tossLight, casual throw
- scatterDistribute in random directions
- superstitionBaseless belief in omens
- bad luckUnfavorable chance events
- wardProtected person; division
evil · evil spirits · protection · shoulder · luck · spill · pinch · ritual · devil · curse · purification · cleanse · grains · crystalline · white · sumo · sumo wrestler · wrestling
- folk beliefssuperstition, superstitions, folk beliefs, omens, good luck
- superstitionssuperstition, superstitions, hexes, black cats, broken mirror
- Japanese wrestlingsumo wrestling, yokozuna, honbasho, makuuchi, heya
- Shinto ritualskagura, purification rites, purification rituals, water purification, shrine visit