adjective
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impertinent
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pert; jaunty
a saucy hat
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of saucy
Explanation
You can use saucy to describe someone who likes to cause trouble, but usually in a playful and funny way. Saucy is also a good word for a person who really likes to flirt. In the novel Oliver Twist, the character the Artful Dodger goes to court for stealing. During his hearing, the ten-year-old screams, “I am an Englishman; where are my rights?” Saucy words from a saucy child. A saucy comment makes people gasp because it’s surprising and a little dangerous or edgy. Saucy can also describe a person who is boldly flirtatious.
Vocabulary lists containing saucy
Words from Shakespearean Insults
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Twelfth Night
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"Two Kinds" by Amy Tan
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
If I’m feeling saucy, shredded iceberg and Swiss join the party.
From Salon ● Jan. 29, 2026
I haven’t yet executed this masterpiece — I need to be in the right mood, saucy enough — but perhaps this week is the week.
From Salon ● Sep. 16, 2025
After graduating in 2011, he debuted the Ooo-We! sauce, a “sweet, spicy, saucy glaze” that he said pairs well with everything from eggs to pork tenderloin.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 5, 2025
She’d come out singing “I Feel for You” — saucy, casual, effortlessly funky — then glided through “Do You Love What You Feel” and “What Cha’ Gonna Do for Me.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2025
But no saucy, beady eyes appeared to peer out of her squirrel pelts.
From "Secrets at Sea" by Richard Peck
Green has a toothier texture and fresher flavor; red is saucier with dusky, earthen undertones.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026
It is launching improvements to its burgers including softer buns that are toasted and saucier Big Macs.
From Reuters ● Apr. 25, 2023
Just as everyone in a restaurant kitchen has their roles to play, from saucier to sommelier, so too are roles assigned at holiday dinner.
From Salon ● Nov. 21, 2022
Add additional wine for a saucier pisto; cook it longer to evaporate more of the liquid for a thicker, spreadable pisto.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 8, 2022
Never had a southern sky been more blue, never the little curling waves saucier on the Gulf.
From The Lady and the Pirate Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive by Harry A. Mathes
Ernst Lubitsch is best remembered today for directing some of the wittiest, sauciest Hollywood romantic comedies of the 1930s and ’40s.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 18, 2026
The new culinary spinoff “Chef’s Table: BBQ” travels the world in search of the smokiest, sauciest, rib-stickingest barbecue.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2020
Shirky’s was only the sauciest form of an argument I heard whenever I mentioned to my techno-utopian friends that I identified with Carr’s distress.
From Slate ● Aug. 16, 2018
What emerges from the churning wash of “Travesties” is one of the sweetest, sauciest and strangest defenses of art ever to land on a stage.
From New York Times ● Apr. 24, 2018
If you gave me the sauciest god that ever sat on a cloud or breakfasted with the Village Idiot—'pon my word, I shouldn't know what to do with him.
From South Wind by Norman Douglas
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
