Green’s Dictionary of Slang

to cheek, to tease.

1835		Blackburn Standard 5 Aug. 8/3: She followed him [...] and blackguarded him through the streets [...] She sauced him and wanted him to fight her.
1854		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 13 May n.p.: Didn’t she known any better than to ‘sauce’ the little girl in B—’s store.
1862		J.R. Lowell Biglow Papers 2nd series (1880) 42: ’T would be a scandle, / When we git sarsed, to fly right off the handle.
1867		J. Greenwood Unsentimental Journeys 213: Two boys; but only one that sauces [...] the other one, Bill, is as civil a lad as you’ll find in a day’s walk.
1875		York Herald 22 July 6/4: She ‘sauced’ him upon which he said that if she did so again he would kiss her.
1883		Nottingham Eve. Post 11 Apr. 3/5: He gave her a slight stroke on the hand with a cane, and because she ‘sauvced’ him, he boxed her ears.
1892		Reynolds’s Newspaper 1 May 1/3: When he accused her of infidelity she ‘only sauced him’, and, having consigned him to a warm place in the infernal regions, told him ’she would do what she liked’.
1903		A. Binstead Pitcher in Paradise 203: He [...] had just had his license endorsed for ‘saucing a rozzer’.
1912		E. Pugh City Of The World 229: I can’t do nothing with her. Steals. Stops out late. Sauces me.
1926		Breton & Bevir Adventures of Mrs. May 111: ‘I’d like to see the woman ’as ’ad sauce me,’ I says.
1935		G. Ingram Cockney Cavalcade 152: Why, you cheeky swine, you! You dare to sauce me like that!
1947		S. Lewis Kingsblood Royal (2001) 306: Vestal backed him in saucing Uncle Oliver.
1966		P. Willmott Adolescent Boys of East London (1969) 139: I start saucing him and all that sort of thing.