You searched for: “saucy
saucy, saucier, sauciest
1. Impertinent or disrespectful.
b. Impertinent in an entertaining way; impossible to repress or control.
3. Etymology: "resembling sauce", later "impertinent, cheeky" (1530),; from sauce.

The connecting notion is the figurative sense of "piquancy in words or actions." From Old French sauce, sausse, from the noun use of Latin salsa, salsus, "salted"; from Old Latin sallere. "to salt" which came from sal, salis, "salt".

Sauce malapert, "impertinence" (1529), and the slang phrase to have eaten sauce or to "be abusive" (1526).

This entry is located in the following unit: sal-, sali- (page 3)