Brackish

WORD OF THE DAY

brackish / adjective / BRACK-ish

Definition
1: somewhat salty
2a: not appealing to the taste
2b: repulsive

Examples
“The Homosassa River is an estuarial waterway that flows through marine wetlands on the western edge of the Florida panhandle, turning brackish as it approaches the Gulf of Mexico.”
— Marissa Grunes, Boston Review, 11 Feb. 2022

Implement brackish groundwater desalination through innovative technologies.
— Maritza Dominguez, The Arizona Republic, 6 July 2022

Did You Know?
When the word brackish first appeared in English in the 1500s, it simply meant "salty," as did its Dutch parent brak. (English speakers also adopted the synonymous brack from the same source but it gets very little use.)
Then, as now, brackish was used to describe water that was a mixture of saltwater and freshwater, such as one encounters where a river meets the sea.
Since that time, however, brackish has developed the additional meanings of "unpalatable" and "repulsive," presumably because of the oozy, mucky, and sometimes stinky (or stinkyish, if you prefer)—not just salty—qualities of coastal estuaries and swamps.
"The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime." 

As this use from Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" illustrates, brackish water can also include things other than salt that make it unpleasant to drink.