SALTY SAUSAGES

The word sausage was borrowed from Old North French saussiche in the mid-fifteenth century. Since then, it peaked in usage during the world wars and the 1980s, with various historical spellings such as sawsyge, sawsege, sossage, saucege, soulsage, sawsage, and saltsage. That last one is perhaps the most appropriate, because the word traces to Vulgar Latin salsica, which translates to "seasoned with salt". The reason for that is that early sausage making was a food preservation technique, wherein meat was salted and put in tubular casings. Salsica is from Latin salsus, meaning "salted", which is from Old Latin sallere, meaning "to salt", which is from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root selh, referring to the noun "salt". That forms parts of words like salad, salary, silt, sauce, and more.