Definition of "salvage" []

• The rescue of a ship, its crew, or its cargo from fire or shipwreck. (noun)
• The ship, crew, or cargo so rescued. (noun)
• Compensation given to those who voluntarily aid in such a rescue. (noun)
• The act of saving imperiled property from loss. (noun)
• The property so saved. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Make what you call a salvage job of it, and your pickings, mister, 'ull be out and away beyond the value of what we've been obliged to make you leave behind you.'"
• "A mother reaches around the baby strapped on her chest to scoop up beads marked VINTAGE, V for the vast enchanted who sleepwalk through the fair, lifting tongs forged by a local smith, as though to salvage from a great fire icons of a past flimsy as a chain of paper dolls, bare as a brass fist with a missing flagpole."
• "That, I think, could be the enduring lesson we salvage from the Teen Mom phenomenon."