Briny means tasting or smelling of salt water, like the ocean. When you visit the beach and breathe in that distinctive ocean smell, or when a wave splashes your face and you taste the salt on your lips, that's the briny quality of seawater.

Sailors talk about the briny deep when they mean the ocean. Pickles get their sour, salty flavor from sitting in brine. Olives packed in jars are preserved in briny liquid.

Briny can describe more than just taste. The air near the ocean has a briny quality that people who live inland notice immediately. Some foods naturally taste briny, like oysters, clams, and seaweed, because they come from salt water and carry that ocean flavor with them.

Writers often use briny to evoke the sea and everything connected to it: adventure, fishing villages, long voyages, and maritime history. When you read about a character tasting the briny spray on a ship's deck, you can almost feel yourself there, sensing that sharp, salty ocean presence.