Wurst
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A German- or Austrian-style sausage. countable, uncountable
"If you pick up a package of liverwurst (German wurst, sausage), you may find that it contains, in addition to liver, nonfat dry milk, salt, corn syrup, flavorings (unspecified), sodium erythrobate, sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, gelatin, and dextrose. The list reads like a list of chemicals for a laboratory experiment! If you wish to avoid “chemicals” in your food, wurst is one of the worst things you can buy."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Conchita Wurst won the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 with the song "Rise Like a Phoenix.""
Etymology
First attested in 1890. Borrowed from German Wurst (“sausage, wurst”), from Middle High German wurst, from Old High German wurst, from Proto-West Germanic *wursti (“something turned or twisted”), from Proto-Indo-European *wert-, *werd- (“to turn”). Akin to Old Saxon worst (“wurst”), Old English weorþan (“to turn, become”). Doublet of wors. Unrelated to worsted (“type of yarn”). More at worth (“to be, become, betide”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.