sauce

Forms

sauce m (plural sauces)^[1] Old Spanish wrote salce and salze;^[2][3] sauze appears in Juan Ruiz, beside the hypercorrect sabze, and Nebrija adopted it.^[2][3] Dialects have saóz (Cespedosa and the Leonese part of Cáceres) and zaz (the Salamanca bank of the Duero); the Diccionario de Autoridades also has sauz.^[2][4]

Etymology

It continues inherited from Old Spanish salce, inherited from Latin salix (“willow”).^[2][3][5][1] The /l/ after /a/ became /u/ when the loss of the Latin vowel brought it before a consonant, as in cauce.^[2] The feminine sarga, a kind of osier, is a doublet: Corominas derives it from a form *salica, perhaps through an archaic Basque *sarika that adapted a Celtic word related to the Latin one.^[2][3][1]

The same Latin word is Catalan salze, Italian salice, Romanian salcie, Occitan sauze and Old French sauz;^[6][1][7] Portuguese and Galician use salgueiro, from a derivative *salicarius.^[6][1][7] The Mozarabic name of the chaste tree, sálico gatíno, is an older form of sauzgatillo.^[2]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *salik-, related to Old Irish sail, Old High German salaha and Old English sealh;^[8][1] Wiktionary gives Proto-Indo-European *sl̥H-ik- (“willow”).^[8][1] De Vaan notes that the alternation of suffixes and the narrow spread of the word point rather to a tree name of non-Indo-European origin.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is the form salce in a charter of 949, and salze in one of 983, both in Oelschläger's list.^[2][3] Alfonso X's General estoria (1272–1275) tells that in the feast of the seven days the people carried branches of myrtle, & de salze & de palmas “and of willow and of palms”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija distinguished the sauze from the sauze gatillo (the chaste tree), and Covarrubias and the Diccionario de Autoridades counted three kinds, the third being the osier used for baskets.^[10][11][4] The Academy in 1817 mentioned the sauce de Babilonia, then newly planted along promenades; today it is better known as the sauce llorón “weeping willow”.^[12][13] The bark gave its name to salicin and salicylic acid, learned formations on the Latin word.^[3]

Timeline

• 949 – salce in a charter;^[2][3] salze follows in 983.^[2][3]
• 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General estoria uses salze.^[9]
• c. 1275 – the General estoria also has the plurals sauzes and sauçes.^[14]
• 1335 – Juan Ruiz uses sauze, the first record of the modern form.^[2][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija enters sauze and sauze gatillo, and saucedal “willow grove”.^[3][10]
• 1535 – the first record from the Americas, at Lima.^[15]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records sauceda.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. willow: a tree of the genus Salix with drooping branches, narrow pointed leaves, white beneath, and flowers in catkins; it grows along rivers: Junto al arroyo crecían dos sauces viejos.^[5][1]

Word family

• sauzgatillo
• sauceda
• saucedal

Related words

• sarga
• salicina
• Latin salix
• Catalan salze

Usage notes

Sauce llorón or sauce de Babilonia is the weeping willow, and sauce blanco the common white willow.^[13][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 176
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sauce
4. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 54
5. ^ a b c Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. sauce
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2995
8. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. sauce
10. ^ a b Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv
11. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1290
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 788
13. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sauce
14. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. sauce
15. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. salce