salient

Salient is an English adjective meaning most noticeable or important, derived from the Latin salientem, the present participle of salire, “to leap.” The term is used to describe features, points, or aspects that stand out relative to their surroundings. In geometry and architecture, a salient is a projecting part of a shape, landform, or fortification; a cliff, peninsula, or bulge that juts outward.

As a noun, salient typically refers to such a projecting element—historically in military contexts to describe a portion of a line that bulges toward the enemy, creating both risk and opportunity for attack.

In everyday use, salient describes prominent traits or arguments. A salient feature is one that is particularly important or relevant to understanding something. The noun saliency (or salience) and the adjective salient are widely used in psychology, neuroscience, and computer science to denote the prominence or attention-grabbing quality of a stimulus.

In cognitive neuroscience, the salience network comprises brain regions that detect and filter salient stimuli and help switch between internal and external modes of attention. In computer vision and machine learning, saliency maps highlight regions of an image that are most likely to attract human or algorithmic attention; features with high salience influence model decisions or segmentation.

The term also appears in geography and linguistics to describe prominent locales or noteworthy linguistic features, though usage varies by field. In general, the word remains a flexible descriptor for anything that stands out, protrudes, or holds particular significance within a given context.