A Saucer Held Sauce Before It Held a Cup
A saucer is the small dish under a cup. It was originally a dish for sauce, and in 1947 a misquoted pilot turned it into the shape of an alien craft.
A saucer is the shallow dish that sits under a teacup. Its name is literal and older than tea: a saucer was a small dish for holding sauce. And in 1947 the pilot Kenneth Arnold described objects that moved like a saucer skipped across water — a newspaper turned the movement into the shape, and the flying saucer was born.
- A dish under a cup. *Cup and saucer.*
- A sauce dish (original). *A pewter saucer.*
- Flying saucer — a disc-shaped craft. *Reports of flying saucers.*
- Saucer-eyed — with wide staring eyes. *Saucer-eyed with fright.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | saucer | A chipped saucer. |
| Plural | saucers | Cups and saucers. |
| Adjective | saucer-shaped | A saucer-shaped hollow. |
| Root | sauce | White sauce. |
| Related | salsa | Tomato salsa. |
- She set the cup down on its saucer.The usual sense.
- His eyes were like saucers.A fixed simile.
- Flying saucer reports peaked in the 1950s.The 1947 coinage.
How the flying saucer was misnamed
- June 1947 — Kenneth Arnold sees nine objects near Mount Rainier
- His words — they moved like a saucer skipped over water
- The press — reported the shape as saucer-like, not the motion
- The result — witnesses began describing discs
- Later term — UFO was coined by the US Air Force in 1953 as a neutral label
Old French *saussier*, a sauce dish, from *sauce*, from Latin *salsus*, salted. English has used the word since the 1300s; the cup sense came with tea drinking in the 1700s.
Why is it called a saucer if it holds a cup?
Because it originally held sauce. The name stayed when the dish found a new job under teacups.
Who first said flying saucer?
The phrase came from press reports of Kenneth Arnold's 1947 sighting. Arnold described how the objects moved, not what shape they were.