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I was watching this interview on TV, I've heard listening helps a lot when you're learning a new language, and this guy said "A sprinkle of sass early in the morning never hurt anyone.", and it was pretty apparent he was just joking around.

I'm just curious, is it a correct grammatical construction? Can we use sprinkle (noun) that way? Does, here, sprinkle mean- a little?

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  • Seems like a dash of humor... You should check dictionary definitions for "sprinkle". If it is not clear then explain further.
    – user3169
    Commented Nov 28, 2017 at 5:06
  • Yes. Sprinkle can be used as a noun in that way. See sense 3.b
    – Billy Kerr
    Commented Mar 15, 2022 at 14:39

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Yes, it means a little.

If you add a sprinkle of something, it means you take a small amount and scatter it over something.

Look at this cupcake, it's sprinkled with sprinkles1:

enter image description here (Source)

In your example, it's used figuratively, of course.

1 small sugar decorations that are intended to be sprinkled on.

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According to dictionary.com, when ‘sprinkle’ is used as a verb, it means ‘To scatter/disperse (liquid, powder, ect.) in drops or particles. e.g. She sprinkled powder on the baby.

This meaning of ‘sprinkle’ can also be transferred to your sentence even though it might be quite hard to picture since sass is an intangible thing.

In your case, it probably means that a little bit of sass scattered or dispersed here and there wouldn’t hurt anyone.

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