"based on or contained in the law code of the Salian Franks," 1540s, from French Salique, from Medieval Latin Salicus, from the Salian Franks, a tribe that once lived near the Zuider Zee, the ancestors of the Merovingian kings, literally "those living near the river Sala" (modern Ijssel).
Salic Law, code of law of Germanic tribes, was invoked 1316 by Philip V of France to exclude a woman from succeeding to the throne of France (and later to combat the French claims of Edward III of England), but the precise meaning of the passage is unclear.
