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
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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.
See Examples For:
The documentary follows Fawaz inside the gym and at home with his family, as well as on the dancefloor during one of his regular salsa sessions.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
The pivot by the 31-year-old artist was especially bold as she had previously been accused of cultural appropriation for recording salsa tunes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
Examples include my everyday chana masala, sheet-pan chicken & veggies and chicken tacos, complete with homemade Mexican rice, pico de gallo, guacamole and a spicy mango salsa.
From Salon ● Jun. 21, 2026
Some have posted online about the free chips and salsa that comes at Hispanic restaurants or the free re-fills offered at nearly every eatery.
From BBC ● Jun. 19, 2026
After Los Tigres score their first goal, a dark guy in a cowboy hat comes toward us with bottles of Coke and plastic bags of pork skins slathered in red salsa.
From "I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter" by Erika L. Sánchez
Another night, we had tacos with three different oven-roasted salsas: tomato; a smoky, porky black bean and corn; and peach, jammy and just a little charred.
From Salon ● Mar. 25, 2026
I ordered a fat carne asada burrito that came with two delicious salsas and a grilled jalapeño.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2026
Think salsas, pasta sauces, chimichurri, housemade condiments and dips.
From Salon ● Jul. 21, 2025
But after weeks of tangos, salsas and foxtrots, it was McCausland and Buswell's night as they topped the public vote.
From BBC ● Dec. 14, 2024
It’s merengues and salsas with horns and bongos and singers crooning about la estrellita de Belén.
From "Merci Suárez Changes Gears" by Meg Medina
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.
