salsa

Pluralsalsas

Formssalsas, salsaing, salsaed

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A hot, tomato-based sauce that originated in Mexico, often containing onions and chili peppers.

   The taqueria offers three kinds of salsa, from mild to blistering.

   He spooned a generous helping of salsa over his scrambled eggs.

   Note

   A borrowing that is simply Spanish for "sauce," and a doublet of English sauce itself. Both words go back to Latin salsus, "salted." Sauce came to English through Old French, while salsa came through Spanish. In English the borrowing narrowed from sauce in general to this one spicy kind. It is countable, so a menu can offer several salsas.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Urban music that took shape in New York, drawing heavily on jazz, rock, and Cuban dance music.

   Salsa filled the air as couples drifted onto the dance floor.

   The club's resident DJ spun salsa between the live sets.

   Note

   A genre name that behaves grammatically like jazz or rock. It is uncountable and takes no article (they play salsa), and it works freely as a modifier (a salsa band, salsa rhythms). Its ingredients are Cuban dance music, jazz and rock, but its birthplace is New York, which makes it an urban style with Cuban roots. The name is the same Spanish word behind the spicy sauce.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   One of a number of dance styles performed to the rhythms of salsa music.

   The instructor demonstrated a Cuban salsa before the class tried it.

   He spun her through a fast salsa on the crowded floor.

   Note

   Where the music is a mass noun, the dance can be counted: you dance a salsa, a class learns several salsas, and a style takes a qualifier, as in a Cuban salsa. That countability is the quickest way to tell it from the music in a sentence. A fast salsa on the floor is a dance, while salsa playing on the radio is the genre.

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To perform the salsa, a lively Latin American dance.

   They salsa until midnight at the little club on the corner.

   She learned to salsa during a summer spent in Havana.

   Note

   A verb made directly from the dance, whose endings attach to the final a without altering it: salsas, salsaing, salsaed, as in they salsaed until late. It is intransitive, so it takes no object. You salsa, or salsa with a partner, but you never salsa something. To name the dance as an object, English falls back on dance: they danced a salsa.

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