An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/Salbader

by Friedrich Kluge

Salbader, masculine, ‘idle talker, quack, Modern High German only (the earliest reference is in the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum); its origin is wrongly attributed to the owner of a bathing establishment (ein Bader) at Jena, who bored his guests with his stale stories. Others prefer to connect it with salvator, ‘saviour,’ so that salbadern would mean ‘to have the name salvator on one's lips, and nothing more,’ an equally improbable explanation.