Skip to main content
Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City

56 1.3
The capital of Utah near the Great Salt Lake and home to the main offices of the Mormon Church
  • proper noun
  • /sɔlt leɪk ˈsɪti/
translation icon : Salt Lake City
  • Discover the beauty and history of Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah, during your visit.
  • Salt Lake City, Utah
  • San Francisco to Salt Lake City
  • Mormon visitors to Salt Lake City

Jeff Johnson of Salt Lake City, UT, says.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • We're a folk-singing group from Salt Lake City.

  • On one hand, Salt Lake City was welcomed as a cultural oasis in a vast wilderness.

    Academic text (1997)
  • Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Salt Lake City.

  • - He took a bus all the way from Salt Lake City to meet me.

  • Some of the workers went back to Salt Lake City, where they could earn cash.

    Academic text (2008)
  • The last people we met in Salt Lake City were four teenagers.

  • I'm really trying to get to Salt Lake City.

  • Final call for flight 1559... ...service to Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

  • Martha and the seniors pose in front of a classic Salt Lake City view.

    Fiction book (1996)
  • I'll be in Phoenix, Buffalo, Salt Lake City and Washington DC.

Surface Forms

Morphology

Salt + lake + city

The name is transparently compositional: 'Salt' + 'lake' + 'city' literally indicates a city associated with a salt lake, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will understand it denotes a place/urban area by a salt lake. Specific facts (capital of Utah, Mormon headquarters) are encyclopedic knowledge beyond word meanings, but the basic geographic sense is directly derivable and cross-linguistically common.

Etymology

Salt Lake City was named because early settlers built a town beside 'the Great Salt Lake', a very salty lake, so the name joins Salt, Lake, and City to show a city by that lake. That is why the name now makes people think of Utah's capital and the home of the 'Mormon Church'.