Research
The quality of standing out from context — in psychology, cognitive salience biases attention and memory toward vivid, recent, or emotionally charged stimuli; in agenda-setting theory (McCombs & Shaw)
Merriam-Webster gives “the quality or state of being salient” and “a striking point or feature : highlight”. First recorded 1836. The first sense is circular and the second is ordinary usage.
A discrepancy worth stating rather than hiding. Merriam-Webster records the everyday sense of standing out, and defines the term partly circularly. The sense this entry defines — the cognitive-psychology sense, in which salience is a property that biases attention and subsequent judgement — is a technical usage the dictionary does not carry. So the citation above sources the word, its history and its ordinary meaning; it does not source the specialised sense, and no dictionary can. That sense belongs to the literature of the discipline, and this entry will cite it when a signed, dated reference source for it has actually been read.
From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).
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