Last week, the American Dialect Society held its 25th Word of the Year proceedings at its annual conference in Portland, Ore. As chairman of the New Words committee, I presided over the vote.

The lion’s share of attention went to a new category: Most Notable Hashtag, for words and phrases preceded by a hash mark (#) to organize conversation on Twitter and elsewhere. The winner of the hashtag category, #blacklivesmatter, went on to win the overall vote as well (though many would quibble that it’s really three words smashed together).

But just as intriguing was the winner in the Most Likely to Succeed category: “salty,” defined as “exceptionally bitter, angry, or upset.” “Salty” is a great example of how slang can be cyclical: The “new” meaning of the word actually stretches back eight decades in African-American usage, but it has been revived for a millennial audience.

From the 19th century on, “salty” has had a number of metaphorical meanings, including “piquant,” “rude,” and “tough,” the latter associated with rough-and-tumble sailors, called “salts” because of their life on the sea.

But African-American newspapers of the 1930s document the emergence of a novel twist on the word, particularly in the expression “jump salty,” meaning “to become suddenly angry.” In the sports section of the July 18, 1935, issue of the Philadelphia Tribune, one writer used hepcat slang to describe events unfolding in Europe: “Now as far as France and Italy were concerned, Hitler was jumping salty, spreading that jive.”