Saucer

How to spell saucer

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce saucer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does saucer mean?

1. nounA small, shallow dish on which a cup is placed, or any similarly round and shallow plate.

Saucer in a sentence

• She set the teacup carefully on its matching saucer.

• A drop of coffee had pooled in the saucer beneath the mug.

Where does saucer come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the Old French saussier or saucier, the name for a small dish or pot used to hold sauce at the table. That in turn rests on the Latin salsa, meaning 'salted things' or a salty relish, which itself grows from sal, the ordinary Latin word for 'salt'. English borrowed the term in the 1300s, when a saucer was literally a vessel for condiments rather than the shallow plate that sits beneath a cup. Over time the meaning narrowed to the familiar dish that catches drips under a teacup, and later it lent its round, shallow shape to the phrase 'flying saucer'. The same salty root still flavours the everyday word 'sauce', which explains why the spelling keeps the 'sauc-' rather than the 'sos-' a speaker might expect from the sound.

How the word is built

• sauce (from Latin salsa: salted things, a relish)
• -er (noun suffix denoting a container or vessel)