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salience

salience

2 7.5
A quality that is easy to notice and more important than other things
  • noun
  • /ˈseɪliəns/
translation icon : saliencia
  • The salience of environmental issues has grown in recent years, capturing the attention of policymakers.
  • salience of issues
  • degree of salience
  • salience and importance

Right up from that is salience, what we're paying attention to inside and out.

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Examples

  • Most people when asked, do think that immigration is too high, and they always have, but its salience has fallen significantly.

  • The second feature of the campaign was the relatively low salience of economic issues.

    Academic text (1991)
  • Further, this issue is of high salience to the Israeli public.

    Academic text (1996)
  • The critical approach has special salience today, given the increased requirement in our society for critical thinking.

    Academic text (1996)
  • Outcome variables in the current study were selected because of their salience to healthy development during youth.

    Academic text (2008)
  • Such ethnic conflicts are of increasing salience in a post-Cold War world.

    Academic text (1996)
  • Military cooperation has assumed greater salience in bilateral Indian-Israel relations.

    Academic text (2013)
  • Several questions in the survey sought information about the salience of climatic hazards to the dairy farmers.

    Academic text (1994)
  • Coded text segments were then mapped onto a matrix so that the salience of each theme could be assessed.

    Academic text (2008)
  • In her speech, she highlighted the salience of education in reducing poverty and improving society.

Synonyms

importance
vssalience
663 1.0

A quality that makes something have great value or effect

is more about being noticeable or prominent beyond mere value
significance
vssalience
194 3.8

How important something is or how much it matters

is more about being noticeable or prominent rather than just meaning
saliency
vssalience
1 8.0

The quality of being very noticeable or important

is the same meaning but often used as an alternate form
momentousness
vssalience
  • Formal
1 7.9

Being very important and likely to have big effects

is the general quality of being prominent and easily noticed rather than only great importance
strikingness
vssalience
6.8

A quality that is easy to notice and attracts attention

is about importance or prominence rather than mere visual attention
noticeability
vssalience
4.9

How easy it is to see or understand something

is about importance or prominence rather than simple visibility
noticeableness
vssalience
4.8

How easy something is to see or understand

is about being important or prominent rather than simple recognizability
cruciality
vssalience
8.2

The great importance of something for a result or decision

is broader covering notable prominence rather than only urgent necessity

Antonyms

A state of not being important or having little effect

How Noticeable

prominence
40 5.6
salience
2 7.5
subtlety
54 6.8
obscurity
33 7.4

Surface Forms

salience singular
saliences plural

Morphology

salience = salient (transparent) = salient + ence

A straightforward nominalization of the adjective 'salient' using the regular noun-forming suffix '-ence', so the meaning is directly 'the quality of being salient'.

Etymology

The word salience comes from the Latin root salire, which means 'to jump', and you can see the same root in the word salient. So, imagine something that 'jumps out' from its background, and that 'jumping out' is why salience means being especially noticeable or important.