Sassy

How to spell sassy

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sassy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sassy mean?

1. adjectiveBold, lively, and cheekily disrespectful in a confident, spirited way.

Sassy in a sentence

• The toddler gave a sassy reply that made the whole room laugh.

• Her sassy comeback during the meeting left her colleagues grinning.

Where does sassy come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Sassy began life in early nineteenth-century American English as a relaxed, dialect respelling of 'saucy', which meant impudent or cheeky and which in turn came from 'sauce', the seasoning. The link runs all the way back to the Latin salsus, meaning 'salted', from sal 'salt', the same root that gives us 'salad' and 'salary'. The idea moved from a literal seasoning to figurative 'spice': someone who was full of cheek was said to be 'saucy', as if adding sharp flavour to their speech. In American pronunciation the 'au' flattened toward an 'a' sound, and the spelling followed, giving us 'sass' and 'sassy' by the 1830s. The double 's' in the middle is the spelling point worth fixing, since it mirrors 'sass', the noun for back-talk, rather than the original 'sauc-' cluster.

How the word is built

• sass (cheeky talk, an alteration of 'sauce')
• -y (adjective suffix meaning 'full of, characterised by')