salsa
Americannoun
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Mexican Cooking. a hot sauce of tomatoes and chile peppers with onion and garlic, and sometimes seasoned with cumin or fresh cilantro, often used as a condiment or served as a dip.
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a lively, vigorous type of contemporary Latin American popular music, blending predominantly Cuban rhythms with elements of jazz, rock, and soul music.
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a ballroom dance of Puerto Rican origin, performed to this music, similar to the mambo, but faster with the accent on the first beat instead of the second beat of each measure.
verb (used without object)
noun
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a type of Latin American big-band dance music
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a dance performed to this kind of music
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Mexican cookery a spicy tomato-based sauce
Etymology
Origin of salsa
First recorded in 1845–50, and in 1970–75 salsa for defs. 2, 3; from Latin American Spanish, Spanish: literally, “sauce”; the dance and music were probably so called originally because of the mixture of styles
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The first track boomed, a Bad Bunny number remixed with a salsa beat, and people started filing in.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 4, 2026
Both 72, they call the event Los Tradicionales — “the traditional ones” — because their goal is to help preserve Cuba’s rich dance heritage, from rumba to timba to casino, an ancestor of salsa.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 4, 2026
An avid gardener, she enjoyed making salsa with her son using homegrown tomatoes and peppers, her husband said.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 4, 2026
Carlos said that Colón expanded and politicised salsa music, taking it to stages where it hadn't been heard before.
From BBC • Feb. 21, 2026
Above my head, a chalkboard sign lists today’s specials: roasted cream of tomato soup with house-made garlic croutons, blackened chili-lime salmon with rice and mango salsa, and double-chocolate lava mudslide with raspberry coulis for dessert.
From "Red Flags and Butterflies" by Sheryl Azzam
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
