Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) to answer back, to cheek; to tease.

1862		Continental Mthly I 195/1: He hab swore a blue streak at him, and called him a d— ab’lishener, jess ’cause Massa K wudn’t get mad and sass him back.
1866		H.L. Williams N.-Y. After Dark 32: Somebody been a sassing you and you want him smashed?
1878		H.B. Stowe Poganuc People 80: If any of them Democrats ‘sassed’ him he’d give ’em as good as they sent.
1883		G.W. Peck Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa (1887) 50: He was going to sass the man, when I told Pa the man was a lunatic from the asylum.
1886		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 24 July 14/2: Such a thing as an umpire ‘sassing back’ was unheard of.
1887		Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Nov. 12/4: Then Jehu followed the lady and her cavalier to the barracks, where he was sassed within an inch of his life, and very soon his licence was suspended for a month.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 Aug. 22/3: I was too sick with opoponax to ‘sass back,’ or analyse his eloquence. The German gutturals fell in thunderstorms of artillery from his lips.
1894		Mirror of Life 27 Jan. 15/3: Bessie Bellwood’s [...] speciality is what is known in bucolic circles as ‘sassin’ back’.
1900		O. Wister Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories 5: Und if der peoples vas to hear you sass old Max Vogel in dis style they would say, ‘Poor old Max’.
1909		J. Washburn Und. Sewer 31: Often we would be caught selling [beer]. Then it would be from $50.00 to $100.00 and costs for the ‘keeper’ and the usual fine for the girls, unless they ‘sassed’; then they also got $50.00.
1912		Bulletin (Sydney) 24 Oct. 11/4: The wonder is that death could get a man like that down at the age of 63, but perhaps he had sassed the Destroyer so often that the latter grew angry, and made a special effort.
1917		Sun (NY) 11 Feb. 11/4: He sassed me an’ I slapped his face.
1928		M.C. Sharpe Chicago May (1929) 39: ‘I won’t shut up.’ I sassed back at the judge.
1928		Thurman & Rapp Harlem in Coll. Writings (2003) 350: Don’ you stan’ dere an’ sass Ma.
1935		L. Hughes Mulatto in Three Negro Plays (1969) Act I: He sassed out Miss Gray in the post office over a box of radio tubes that come by mail.
1944		J. Archibald ‘Meat Bawl’ in Popular Detective Aug. 🌐 Git your hat and coat, cowface [...] I told you oncet to stop sassin’ up a high-class joint.
1947		N. Algren ‘El Presidente de Méjico’ in Texas Stories (1995) 84: And let a greaser sass him / He was shore to feel his steel.
1949		H.C. Bosman Cold Stone Jug (1981) II 79: The discipline-screws didn’t let up one moment in sassing us around.
1951		(ref. to 1860s) S. Longstreet Pedlocks (1971) 31: Every week, Betsy [...] would leave the house in the bend of Church Street, a five-dollar coin in her mouth, shaking her behind at George, the coloured butler, and sassing the indoor ‘niggers’ who hated her as they hated all field hands.
1957		D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 23 Nov. 13: Anyone with a white face [...] could get Sambo or Rastus strung up [...] by merely whispering that sam or Ras had ‘sassed’ him .
1965		C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 28: What I tole you about sassin’ ole people?
1977		A. Brooke Last Toke 186: Hurt mo’ ’n you arm you be sassin’ me!
1987		(con. 1967) E. Spencer Welcome to Vietnam (1989) 19: I’d hit a guy if he sassed me.
2005		L. Theroux Call of the Weird (2006) 128: She’s also sassed a client.
2013		J. Stahl Happy Mutant Baby Pills 164: Her grandmother used to beat her with her Indian moccasin, then shove it in her mouth for ‘sassing off’.
2018		‘Aidan Truhen’ Price You Pay 274: Price seriously what do you care so long as you get to do appalling things and sass people and get laid?