Meaning & Analysis
Advises that one should spend a great deal of time and share many experiences—symbolized by consuming a large quantity of salt—before truly trusting or calling someone a friend.
Insights
Test of Time and Experience
Emphasizes that genuine friendship can only be established after enduring many shared moments—both pleasant and difficult—symbolized by the slow, communal consumption of a bushel of salt.
Caution in Trust
Advises prudence and patience in forming close bonds, warning against hasty trust or intimacy with those whose character has not yet been revealed through prolonged association.
Historical Symbolism
The image of eating a bushel of salt is ancient, traced to Erasmus’s Adagia and rooted in Greek and Roman antiquity. Salt, as a preservative and a seasoning, marks the passage of many shared meals—standing for the accumulation of time and the savoring of life's complexities together.
Cultural and Literary Resonance
Widely cited by classical, Renaissance, and early modern authors (Plutarch, Erasmus, Elyot, Burton), this proverb recurs across European literature as a metaphor for slow acquaintance and tested loyalty, reinforcing friendship as an earned, not automatic, relationship.
Psychological Dimensions
Recognizes the need for trust to develop gradually, through shared trials and the slow revelation of character. It warns against the pitfalls of superficial or impulsive alliances.
Rhetorical Devices
Hyperbole
The exaggerated quantity—a bushel of salt—vividly communicates the patience and endurance required for genuine friendship.
Metaphor
Salt stands for time, experience, and the savor of shared life, transforming ordinary eating into a symbol for the building of deep bonds.
Imperative Mood
Phrased as a direct injunction, the proverb gains universal, practical force.
Transcription
Quotations
Nemini fidas, nisi cum quo prius modium salis absumpseris. Vulgo apud nostrates circumfertur adagium.
In as longe tyme as by them bothe beinge to gether conuersaunt a hole busshell of salte mought be eten.
(Trust no man onles thou hast fyrst eaten).
The Philosophers will us to eat a bushel of salt with a man before we enter into strict familiarity with him.
Haue I not also learned that one shoulde eate a bushell of salt with him, whom he meaneth to make his friend?
We must eate a bushell of salte with a man, before we can know him well.
As Plutarch adviseth, one must eat a bushel of salt with him before he choose his friend.
You and I have not eaten a bushel of salt yet.
Eat a peck of salt with a man before you trust him.
*That you may be the better apprised of his Humours.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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