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A salver is a flat heavy 
Ceremonial salvers have also been used as major sporting trophies, most notably a sterling silver salver as the Ladies' Singles trophy in the
A salver is a flat heavy tray
A tray is a shallow platform designed for the carrying of items. It can be fashioned from numerous materials, including silver, brass, sheet iron, paperboard, wood, melamine, and molded pulp. Trays range in cost from inexpensive molded pulp tray ...
of silver
Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...
, other metal
A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...
or glass used for carrying or serving glasses
Glasses, also known as eyeglasses (American English), spectacles (Commonwealth English), or colloquially as specs, are vision eyewear with clear or tinted lenses mounted in a frame that holds them in front of a person's eyes, typically u ...
, cup
A cup is an open-top vessel (container) used to hold liquids for drinking, typically with a flattened hemispherical shape, and often with a capacity of about . Cups may be made of pottery (including porcelain), glass, metal, wood, stone, pol ...
s, and dishes at a table, or for the presenting of a letter or card
Card or The Card may refer to:
Common uses
* Plastic cards of various types:
**Bank card
**Credit card
**Debit card
**Payment card
* Playing card, used in games
* Printed circuit board, or card
* Greeting card, given on special occasions
Arts an ...
by a servant
A domestic worker is a person who works within a residence and performs a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly ...
. In a royal or noble
A noble is a member of the nobility.
Noble may also refer to:
Places Antarctica
* Noble Glacier, King George Island
* Noble Nunatak, Marie Byrd Land
* Noble Peak, Wiencke Island
* Noble Rocks, Graham Land
Australia
* Noble Island, Gr ...
household the fear of poison
A poison is any chemical substance that is harmful or lethal to living organisms. The term is used in a wide range of scientific fields and industries, where it is often specifically defined. It may also be applied colloquially or figurati ...
ing led to the custom of tasting the food or beverage before it was served to the master and his guests; this was known as the assay
An assay is an investigative (analytic) procedure in laboratory medicine, mining, pharmacology, environmental biology and molecular biology for qualitatively assessing or quantitatively measuring the presence, amount, or functional activity ...
of meat
Meat is animal Tissue (biology), tissue, often muscle, that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted and farmed other animals for meat since prehistory. The Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of vertebrates, including chickens, sheep, ...
and drink, and in Spanish was called ''salva''.
The verb ''salvar'' means to preserve from risk, from the Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
''salvare'', to save. The term ''salva'' was also applied to the dish or tray on which the food or drink was presented after the tasting process. There seems no doubt that this Spanish word is the source of the English salver; a parallel is found in the origin of the term '' credenza'', which comes from Italian.
Ceremonial salvers have also been used as major sporting trophies, most notably a sterling silver salver as the Ladies' Singles trophy in the Wimbledon tennis championships
The Wimbledon Championships, commonly called Wimbledon, is a tennis tournament organised by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in collaboration with the Lawn Tennis Association annually in Wimbledon, London. It is chronologically the ...
since 1886, and since 1978, for the runner-up at the Masters golf tournament.
References
Serving and dining {{cooking-tool-stub