sauce

UK/sɔːs/

nounA22 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,844 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: sauces

A sauce is the thick tasty liquid poured over food. Tomato sauce, soy sauce, sauce for the pasta.

French cooking organises them under a handful of mother sauces from which the rest are derived, which is the tidiest system anybody has managed. A sauce carries flavour and moisture at once. Sauce also means cheek or impudence in British use. Note that the word comes from the Latin for salted, like salsa and salad.

Definitions of sauce

1nounsauceA thick tasty liquid poured over food.A2
“The pasta came with a rich tomato sauce and fresh basil.”
- Said"Save me some of that sauce; I'll have it with bread later."
- WrittenThe best sauces begin with something browning at the bottom of the pan.
- UsedSimmer the sauce for twenty minutes, stirring now and then, until it coats a spoon.
- ContrastSauce, not soup. Soup is the meal; sauce is poured over the meal. soup →
- Not thisKetchup from a bottle is not really sauce in a kitchen. A sauce is made from something cooked.
- Exchange"Is there any sauce left?""A spoonful. Scrape the jug."
Patterna + noun + sauce (tomato, cheese, soy) · in a sauce · make / thicken / reduce a sauce · sauce for + noun
2nouncheekCheek or impudence.C1
“"Less of your sauce, young man!" said the teacher when the boy answered back.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

sauce is a liquid accompaniment.

Remember it

It comes from the Latin for salted: at bottom a sauce is something salted, poured over the food to give it taste.

hooks ontosalt

Where it comes from

Vulgar Latin salsa is the feminine of salsus, salted, from sal, salt. Salsa, salad and sausage come from the same salt.

Proto-Indo-European
*sḗh₂l
Latin
salsus — salted
Vulgar Latin
*salsa
Old French
sause
Middle English
sauce
English, today
sauce

Built from

saliō · Latin — to salt

From Middle English sauce, from Old French sause, from Vulgar Latin salsa, noun use of the feminine of Latin salsus (“salted”), past participle of saliō (“to salt”), from sal. a doublet of salsa. For the meaning development compare ἥδυσμα ultimately from swéh₂dus (whence also sweet).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

sauce in the wild

Tomato sauce can refer to many different sauces made primarily from tomatoes.
Tomato sauce
All of these qualities make them ideal for simple and appealing sauces.
Tomato sauce
Tabasco is an American brand of hot sauce made from vinegar, tabasco peppers, and salt.
Tabasco sauce
Some garum-related fish sauces have been used in the West since the Roman times.
Fish sauce
The umami flavor in fish sauce is due to its glutamate content.
Fish sauce

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the sause family

sauce

sauce — used about once every 215 pages · #1,844 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of sauce

1nounsauceA thick tasty liquid poured over food.A2

“The pasta came with a rich tomato sauce and fresh basil.”

Said"Save me some of that sauce; I'll have it with bread later."
WrittenThe best sauces begin with something browning at the bottom of the pan.
UsedSimmer the sauce for twenty minutes, stirring now and then, until it coats a spoon.
ContrastSauce, not soup. Soup is the meal; sauce is poured over the meal. soup →
Not thisKetchup from a bottle is not really sauce in a kitchen. A sauce is made from something cooked.
Exchange"Is there any sauce left?""A spoonful. Scrape the jug."

Patterna + noun + sauce (tomato, cheese, soy) · in a sauce · make / thicken / reduce a sauce · sauce for + noun

2nouncheekCheek or impudence.C1

“"Less of your sauce, young man!" said the teacher when the boy answered back.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

sauce is a liquid accompaniment.