sauce
Pluralsauces
Pluralsauces
- 1A liquid or thickened condiment served with or poured over food to add flavor.
The chef finished the dish with a drizzle of caramel sauce.
Restaurant kitchens prepare several sauces fresh each morning.
UsageSay some sauce for the food on your plate and two sauces for kinds; the type often goes in front: mint sauce.
- 2A thick tomato-based condiment, equivalent to what Americans call ketchup.
At the football match he bought a meat pie and drowned it in sauce from a tomato-shaped squeeze bottle.
At the footy, almost everyone grabs a meat pie and squeezes a thick line of sauce across the top.
UsageIn North America, say ketchup; tomato sauce usually means a sauce used in cooking.
Similarketchup
Note
In Australia, New Zealand and India, an unqualified sauce on the table usually means the tomato kind that Americans buy as ketchup; in the UK it often means this too, though it may also mean brown sauce. A meat pie and sauce is the classic pairing.
- 3
Less common meanings
- 4Alcoholic drink; intoxicating liquor.
He swore off the sauce after the doctor's warning.
I've been pretty much off the sauce during the last week, trying to get Pepper to like me again. (Horace won't drink with me any more.)
1993, Tristan Hawkins, PepperUsageUsually with the: hit the sauce, lay off the sauce, be off the sauce.
Similarbooze, liquor, drink, alcohol, grog
Note
P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves in the Offing (1960) has a husband walk into the Thames "under the influence of the sauce."
- 5Vitality, capability, or talent.
The young guard plays with so much sauce that defenders can't keep up.
Critics agreed the album had the sauce its predecessor lacked.
UsageOften have the sauce or lose the sauce; it has nothing to do with drink.
Similarjuice
- 6Another spelling of source: the original source of an image, video, or claim posted online, especially when someone asks where it came from.
Commenters flooded the thread asking for the sauce.
She replied with the sauce so others could find the original art.
UsageMostly in comment threads, often as a bare sauce?; in other writing, use source.
Note
The Internet borrowed the spelling of the food word for source, but the two are different words. In a comment thread, a bare "sauce?" asks where an image, clip or claim came from, and replying with the sauce means posting the original.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- The food word sauce and the word source have different origins. en.wiktionary.org
- 7Cheeky or disrespectful talk; impertinence.
Her constant sauce earned her a week of detention.
‘Well, you know what Matchett’s like! Just about bring herself to talk to me because I’m housemaid, but if the gardener’s boy so much as looks at ’er it’s sauce,’ said Sarah.
1967, Barbara Sleigh, JessamyUsageOften with no article: any sauce, such sauce; cheek is the more everyday word.
Similarcheek, impertinence, impudence, insolence, lip
Oppositerespect, courtesy, deference
Note
This is the backtalk of someone expected to know their place, and the word now sounds dated. In Tolkien's The Two Towers (1954), Sam faces Faramir as if scolding a young hobbit who had offered him "sauce" when questioned about the orchard; in Barbara Sleigh's Jessamy (1967) even a look from the gardener's boy counts as "sauce."
- 8To speak to someone in a cheeky, impudent, or sharp manner.
The apprentice sauced his boss once too often.
She tends to sauce anyone who questions her.
Note
Shakespeare's As You Like It has "I'll sauce her with bitter words," and a speaker in Conan Doyle asks "has Willie sauced you?"
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- William Shakespeare's As You Like It contains the quoted words, spoken by Rosalind in Act III, scene V. gutenberg.org
- A character in Arthur Conan Doyle's writing asks the quoted question; the speaker is Silas Linden in The Land of Mist. gutenberg.org
- 9Anabolic steroids taken to enhance muscle growth.
Several lifters in the competition were caught using sauce.
He credited his rapid gains to sauce rather than to training.
UsageMostly among lifters, as in using sauce; doctors and drug tests say anabolic steroids.
Note
Like the drinking slang, it turns a substance someone keeps taking into "the sauce".
- 10
- 11Garden vegetables eaten as food, especially as an accompaniment to meat.
Note
Nineteenth-century American slang that stretched the dinner-table word to whatever grew in the garden. John Neal's The Down-Easters (1833) spells it the way it was said: "cabbage or potaters, or most any sort o' garden sarse." The usage is obsolete. In older dialect speech it meant, more narrowly, vegetables served alongside meat.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- Sauce meant vegetables in nineteenth-century American slang. en.wiktionary.org
- John Neal wrote The Down-Easters, first published in 1833. archive.org
- Sarse represents a pronunciation of sauce. en.wiktionary.org
- The quoted words occur in The Down-Easters, in dialogue spoken by a down-easter character. archive.org
- An older dialect meaning was garden vegetables eaten with meat. en.wiktionary.org
- 12To give zest, interest, or appeal to something, making it more lively, pleasing, or enjoyable, as if by adding sauce.
Then fell she to sauce her desires with threatenings.
a. 1587, Philip Sidney, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia] - 13A soft crayon used in stump drawing or for shading with a stump.
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Origin
This word came through Middle English and Old French sause from Vulgar Latin *salsa, a noun use of the feminine of Latin salsus ('salted'), the past participle of saliō ('I salt'), from sal ('salt'). It is a doublet of salsa.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- English sauce came through Middle English and Old French sause. en.wiktionary.org
- Old French sause derives from Vulgar Latin *salsa, a noun formed from the feminine of Latin salsus, meaning salted. en.wiktionary.org
- Salsus is the past participle of the Latin verb meaning to salt, also given as saliō. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin saliō means I salt and derives from the Latin noun for salt. en.wiktionary.org
- Sauce and salsa are doublets. en.wiktionary.org