sausage
Pluralsausages
Verbsausages, sausaging, sausaged
Pluralsausages
Formssausages, sausaging, sausaged
- 1A food of ground meat or meat substitute and seasoning, packed into a casing of animal intestine or a similar cylindrical synthetic one; also, a single length of it.
The butcher makes his own sausage from pork shoulder and fennel.
She ordered a bratwurst, a thick sausage served on a roll with mustard.
Note
The name goes back to salt: Anglo-Norman sausiche, from Late Latin salsīcia, from salsīcius, "seasoned with salt", and ultimately Latin sal, "salt". Italian salsiccia and Spanish salchicha come from the same Latin, and English saucisse, which reached the language by another route, is its doublet. As a mass noun it names the meat itself, homemade sausage; counted, it means a single length, two sausages and an egg.
- 2A dachshund.
A wire-haired sausage named Otto trotted beside her, his belly almost brushing the sidewalk.
She has owned three sausages, and every one of them dug holes under the fence.
Similardachshund
- 3
- 4A playful term of endearment, used to or about someone one is fond of.
Oh, you silly sausage, your shoes are on the wrong feet!
Her dad still calls her his little sausage, even though she's thirty.
Note
A fond little adjective usually comes with it. Silly sausage is a gentle scolding, said with a smile to someone who has done something foolish, while little sausage is plain affection, often for a child. The fondness can stretch to things: Your Sinclair's review of the game Tilt calls it a little sausage worth adding to your collection.
- 5A penis.
After the swim in the freezing lake, he complained that his sausage had all but disappeared.
The comedian built half his act around jokes about his sausage and his age.
Note
Innuendo rather than shock is its home: the word turns up in jokes that play on the food, and the comedy is half the meaning. It is still vulgar, so keep it for banter among friends; in front of strangers or in any serious talk about the body, penis is the word.
- 6To squeeze someone or something into a tight-fitting covering, such as clothing.
Every winter morning she would sausage the twins into their puffy snowsuits before school.
He sausaged himself into a wetsuit that hadn't fit since college.
Similarsqueeze, cram, stuff, squash
Note
Novelists reach for this verb when a body and its clothes are at odds, and it is rarely flattering. It works in two directions: a person can be sausaged into several overcoats, as in James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), or the garment can do the squeezing, as with too-tight shorts that sausaged her hips. Either way the picture is a casing filled to bursting.
- 7
- 8To make something look like a sausage, especially as if it barely fits inside its skin or covering.
Tight elastic cuffs sausage the wrists of anyone with thick arms.
Hours on the plane had sausaged his ankles over the tops of his shoes.
- 9To get into a snug-fitting garment, used with on.
I can still sausage on my old cycling shorts, but I can't breathe in them.
Running late, she sausaged on a pair of leggings and ran out the door.
Note
The particle on turns the verb into a way of dressing: you sausage on skinny jeans or leggings the way you pull on a sweater, and the word adds the struggle. The object is the garment rather than the body, which is what separates it from the squeezing sense.
- 10To make meat, or an animal, into sausage.
Small farms often sausage the trimmings left over after the hams and chops are cut.
Each fall the family smoked the bacon and sausaged whatever pork was left.
Note
Farm and butchery writing pairs it with the other ways of putting up a pig: baconed and sausaged, or smoking, brining and sausaging the meat at butchering time. The object can be the meat or the whole animal, as with pigs on their way to being quartered and sausaged.
- 11Short for sausage roll: British rhyming slang for the dole, or unemployment.
After the factory shut, half the street ended up on the sausage.
He's been on the sausage since Christmas and can barely cover the rent.
Note
Rhyming slang works in two steps here: sausage roll rhymes with dole, and then the rhyme is dropped, leaving sausage to carry the meaning alone. It takes the and lives in the phrase on the sausage, just as one is on the dole. Sausage roll has a second slang use, for a goal, so the setting matters.
- 12In engineering, to form a sausage-like shape whose cross section is not uniform along its length.
Under heavy compression the rubber tube began to sausage, bulging between the clamps.
If the extrusion speed is too high, the filament sausages and its diameter varies along the strand.
Similarbulge
Note
Engineers use it for a long piece, such as a jet of liquid, a fiber or a column of plasma, that narrows in some places and swells in others, like a string of sausage links. The pattern is often a sign of instability, and in plasma physics the pinching mode that does this is called the sausage instability.
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Origin
From late Middle English sawsiche, from Anglo-Norman sausiche, from Late Latin salsīcia (compare Spanish salchicha, Italian salsiccia), feminine of salsīcius ("seasoned with salt"), from Latin salsus ("salted"), from sal ("salt"). It is a doublet of saucisse and displaced the native Old English mearh.