souriço

Old Galician-Portuguese

Etymology

Uncertain. Early medieval /ow/ implies an earlier */aw/, and the ending is presumably to be identified with -iço. The initial element can therefore be reconstructed as */sawɾ-/, which may correspond to Proto-West Germanic *sauʀ(ī) (“dry”). The semantics seem fitting enough for a cured meat. In any case the term lacks any Romance cognates (Spanish chorizo being a borrowing from Galician or Portuguese) which – if the foregoing etymology is correct – may point to a localised borrowing via Suevic.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /sowˈɾit͡so/

Noun

souriço m (plural souriços)

chorizo (type of sausage)
- 13th c., Fernão Garcia de Sousa, cantiga de escárnio :
  Non acharedes, en toda Castela, / graças a Deus, de que mi agora praz, / melhor ventrulho nen melhor morcela / do que a ama con sa mão faz; / e al faz ben, como diz seu marido; / faz bon souriç' e lava ben transsido / e deita ben galinha choca assaz.
  You won't find in all of Castile – thank God for how she delights me – any better sausage of tripe, nor any of blood, than the one that the maid makes by hand. She's good at other things too, as her husband reports: she's good at making chorizo [...]

Descendants

Galician: chourizo
Portuguese: chouriço
- → English: chouriço
- → Spanish: chorizo (or borrowed from Galician) (see there for further descendants)

References

Joan Coromines, José A[ntonio] Pascual (1984) “chorizo”, in Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico [Critic Castilian and Hispanic Etymological Dictionary] (in Spanish), volume II (Ce–F), Madrid: Gredos, →ISBN, page 392
Martins Estêvez, Higino. Germanismos pouco estudados do Galego-Português.