saucisson (French)

Where does "saucisson" come from?

The French 'saucisson' comes from Middle French 'saulcisson', meaning large sausage, which was borrowed from Italian 'salsiccione'[1]. The Italian word is an augmentative formed from 'salsiccia' plus the suffix -one[2]. 'Salsiccia' goes back to Late Latin 'farta salsīcia', literally stuffed salted meat, built on Latin 'salsus', meaning salted[3][5]. That adjective is a form of 'sallō', to salt, and ultimately rests on Latin 'sal', salt[6][4]. Classical Latin used 'farcimen' for sausage before the salted term spread[3]. French speakers may read 'saucisson' as 'saucisse' plus -on, but that is only a surface reading, not the actual history.

Open questions

The Latin 'sal' and its Proto-Indo-European source are reconstructed, and the ablaut pattern proposed for them is an interpretation rather than settled fact. [4] [7]
The earliest attestation of the 'salsicius' formation is dated only to the second century CE, so the exact moment the salted sausage term arose is not firmly fixed. [5]

Full etymology tree

saucisson (French), 'large sausage, often well-spiced and dried such as salami'
- inherited saulcisson (Middle French)
  - borrowed salsiccione (Italian), 'a large sausage'
    - compound salsiccia (Italian), 'sausage'
      - inherited salsīcia (Late Latin)
        derived sal (Latin), 'salt'
        inherited *sāls (Proto-Italic), 'salt'
        inherited *séh₂ls (Proto-Indo-European), 'salt'
    - suffix -one (Italian), 'suffix used to form augmentatives'

Ancestors

salsiccione (Italian)

Descendants and derived words

saucissonnage (French)
saucissonner (French)

Sources

Updated October 2026

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Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris