sausage
Americannoun
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sausages
plural
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minced pork, beef, or other meats, often combined, together with various added ingredients and seasonings, usually stuffed into a prepared intestine or other casing and often made in links.
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Aeronautics. a sausage-shaped observation balloon, formerly used in warfare.
noun
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finely minced meat, esp pork or beef, mixed with fat, cereal or bread, and seasonings ( sausage meat ), and packed into a tube-shaped animal intestine or synthetic casing
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an object shaped like a sausage
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informal aeronautics a captive balloon shaped like a sausage
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nothing at all
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of sausage
1400–50; late Middle English sausige < dialectal Old French sausiche < Late Latin salsīcia, neuter plural of salsīcius seasoned with salt, derivative of Latin salsus salted. See sauce, -itious
Compare meaning
How does sausage compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
Sausage is a food made from meat that's minced or ground, flavored with seasonings, and encased in a thin skin. It's best not to think too much about what lives inside a sausage casing; just enjoy eating it. There are many kinds of sausage, some of which are sold raw, some cooked, and others smoked, cured, or dried. Traditionally, sausages have been a way to avoid waste, by using the less appealing parts of a butchered pig or cow, and a practical way to preserve meat so that it doesn't have to be cooked immediately or frozen. In the mid-fifteenth century, the word was spelled sawsyge, from a Latin root, salsus, or "salted."
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:
Just over a year later, in June 2022, Jeremy died after eating a beef sausage on a camping trip with friends at a beach north of Sydney.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
The lobby was packed with guests for the morning spread of eggs, sausage, french toast, pastries, fruit, yogurt, bagels and the aforementioned waffles and toast.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026
The menu includes meat pies, sausage rolls and barramundi.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
The idea is to dip each raw vegetable or sausage first in mustard, then in cottage cheese, before taking a bite.
From Salon ● May 24, 2026
According to Julia that's exactly what sausage rolls're made of.
From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell
"When we go out for pizza, people don't just order a Margherita. They put chips, sausages and fried food on top."
From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2026
Whether the station was helping fight the fires of 2025 or running a pancake breakfast, McIndoe said, Fanara pitched in, supplying pizzas and sausages, offering pizza-making lessons and refusing payment.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
In the original 2009 paper, the concept was that any food which required some form of cooking—including bread, cured sausages, corn chips, etc.—would be considered an “ultra” processed food product.
From Slate ● Jul. 12, 2026
Germany’s greatest culinary achievements, he said, are beer, bread and sausages.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
When we had the money, we’d have bloodwurst or knockwurst and sauerkraut or sausages with baked potatoes and cabbage.
From "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Myers
Definitions 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.
