Pinch of salt « The Word Detective

Pinch of salt « The Word Detective:

"“To take something with a pinch of salt” (or “with a grain of salt”) means to accept a statement with a certain amount of skepticism and not to assume that it is entirely accurate or complete (“A more critical spirit slowly developed, so that Cicero and his friends took more than the proverbial pinch of salt before swallowing everything written by these earlier authors,” 1943). The expression has been found in print in English starting in the mid-17th century, though it is probably much older."