Origin: French suffix -age
Sausage has 4 different meanings across 1 category:
highly seasoned minced meat stuffed in casings
"The chef grilled the spicy sausage until it was perfectly browned and juicy."
a small nonrigid airship used for observation or as a barrage balloon
"The military base deployed several sausages to block enemy aircraft from reaching the city."
A food made of ground meat (or meat substitute) and seasoning, packed in a section of the animal's intestine, or in a similarly cylindrical shaped synthetic casing; a length of this food.
"The sizzling sausage smelled delicious as it cooked on the grill."
In plain English: A sausage is a type of meat that has been ground up and stuffed into a thin casing, usually sold as part of a meal or snack.
"We grilled sausages for dinner last night."
Usage: Sausage refers to an edible product made from ground meat mixed with spices and encased in casing, rather than describing any other type of food item. When used as a verb, it means to mold something into this specific cylindrical shape.
To form a sausage-like shape, with a non-uniform cross section.
"The baker shaped the dough into long, uneven cylinders before baking them."
In plain English: To sausage something means to cut it into small pieces and mix them together with other ingredients, usually meat.
"The sausage machine ground all the meat into uniform links in just minutes."
The word sausage comes from Late Latin salsīcia, which means "seasoned with salt." It is derived from the Latin root for salt, reflecting how these meat products were originally preserved by salting.