sauced

1. 1
   adjective

   Coated or covered with a sauce, especially as part of a prepared dish.

   The chef served generously sauced fillets with a side of greens.

   Properly sauced noodles should glisten without pooling liquid at the bottom of the bowl.

   Similardressed, coated, glazed

   Oppositeunsauced, sauceless

   Note

   A kitchen word that grades easily. A dish can be lightly, generously or heavily sauced, and one plate can be more sauced than another. It compares with more and most rather than with an -er ending. Its opposites are unsauced and sauceless. In menus and recipes it most often sits right before the noun, as in sauced fish or sauced noodles.

2. 2
   adjectiveslang

   Drunk; visibly affected by having consumed too much alcohol.

   After three rounds at the bar, he was thoroughly sauced.

   She arrived already sauced and could barely stand.

   Similarblasted, bombed, besotted, boozy, blitzed

   Oppositesober

   Note

   Slang for drunkenness that borrows "the sauce" as a name for alcoholic drink. It belongs to casual talk alongside plastered, hammered and smashed, and stays out of formal writing. It usually follows the verb, often with an intensifier: he was thoroughly sauced. Said of a person, it never means coated in sauce, so the subject alone tells you which word is meant.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of sauce.

   She sauced the pasta with a rich tomato reduction.

   The fish was sauced just before serving.

   Note

   A regular past form: the silent e of sauce simply takes -d, and one spelling serves both "she sauced the pasta" and "the fish was sauced." It carries every sense of the verb, not only the kitchen one, so a pupil who has sauced the teacher has been impudent, not culinary. Placed before a noun, the participle shades into the "covered in sauce" adjective.

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