souriço

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

• IPA^(key): /sowˈɾit͡so/

souriço m (plural souriços)

1. 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 [...]

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

• Joan Coromines, José A. Pascual (1984) “chorizo”, in Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (in Spanish), volumes II (Ce–F), Madrid: Gredos, →ISBN, page 392
• Martins Estêvez, Higino. Germanismos pouco estudados do Galego-Português.