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
Explanation
The spicy, tomato-based sauce that's served with your burrito is salsa. Salsa is also great for dipping tortilla chips in. Officially, the familiar Mexican type of salsa is called salsa picante, or "spicy sauce" in Spanish. In fact, salsa — which is rooted in the Latin salsa, "salty food" or "condiment" — means "sauce" in both Spanish and Italian. There is also a genre of music called salsa, which gets its name from the implied "spiciness" of the sauce, as well as the blending of Cuban and Puerto Rican styles of dance music.
Vocabulary lists containing salsa
World Cuisine - Introductory
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World Cuisine - Middle School and High School
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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.
“You can make a salsa verde or a chimichurri out of it,” he added, noting that the ramp also pairs well with proteins like beef and chicken as well as pork and fish.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 13, 2026
She laughed some more when I told her that their leader, Medea Benjamin, was a great salsa dancer.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 3, 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
I peeked inside and saw a fresh tortilla, stuffed with rice and beans and onion and red salsa and green cilantro and grilled chicken.
From "The Honest Truth" by Dan Gemeinhart
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.
