Meaning of salto mortale | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A dangerous and daring jump with possibly lethal outcome.
2. A risky, dangerous or crucial step or undertaking.
   figuratively

Equivalents

Examples

“I take shame to myself…for having been more taken by the salti mortali* of a waiter who summed up my account at a Paduan restaurant, than by all the strategies with which the city has been many times captured and recaptured. * Salti mortali are those prodigious efforts of mental arithmetic by which Italian waiters, in verbally presenting your account, arrive at six as the product of two and two.”

“The frenzied, suggestible, gregarious, subconscious self, freed from all rational restraints, celebrated its delirious orgies, its corybantic bacchanalia, held its mad salto mortale over the grave of crucified humanity.”

CEFR level