sauce
- any preparation, usually liquid or semiliquid, eaten as a gravy or as a relish accompanying food.
- stewed fruit, often puréed and served as an accompaniment to meat, dessert, or other food: cranberry sauce.
- something that adds piquance or zest.
- Informal. impertinence; sauciness.
- Slang. hard liquor (usually preceded by the): He's on the sauce again.
- Archaic. garden vegetables eaten with meat.
- to dress or prepare with sauce; season: meat well sauced.
- to make a sauce of: Tomatoes must be sauced while ripe.
- to give piquance or zest to.
- to make agreeable or less harsh.
- Informal. to speak impertinently or saucily to.
Origin of sauce
Examples from the Web for sauce
Contemporary Examples
Continue to cook until the sauce has reduced by three quarters.
Finish the sauce by putting the roasting pan on the stovetop over medium-high heat.
The future congressman also had some spaghetti but no sauce.
Now you can scroll to the next direction on your recipe without getting batter or sauce all over your device.
The Daily Beast’s 2014 Holiday Gift Guide: For the Richard Hendriks in Your LifeAllison McNearney
November 29, 2014
“I think everything is about sauce… chicken is just chicken,” she says.
Kelis’s Comeback: The R&B Diva on New Album ‘Food,’ Legacy of ‘Milkshake,’ and the Nas SplitMarlow Stern
May 3, 2014
Historical Examples
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: take that in your thought too.
Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9)Samuel Richardson
Add the remainder of the celery and pour the sauce over this.
Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
Pears are most valuable when they are canned and used for sauce.
Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
The sauce to use depends on the dessert that it is to accompany.
Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
Beat the whites stiff and fold them carefully into the sauce.
Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
sauce
- any liquid or semiliquid preparation eaten with food to enhance its flavour
- anything that adds piquancy
- US and Canadian stewed fruit
- US dialect vegetables eaten with meat
- informal impudent language or behaviour
- to prepare (food) with sauce
- to add zest to
- to make agreeable or less severe
- informal to be saucy to
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for sauce
n.
mid-14c., from Old French sauce, sausse, from Latin salsa "things salted, salt food," noun use of fem. singular or neuter plural of adjective salsus "salted," from past participle of Old Latin sallere "to salt," from sal (genitive salis) "salt" (see salt (n.)).
Meaning "something which adds piquancy to words or actions" is recorded from c.1500; sense of "impertinence" first recorded 1835 (see saucy, and cf. sass). Slang meaning "liquor" first attested 1940.
v.
mid-15c., "to season," from sauce (n.). From 1862 as "to speak impertinently." Related: Sauced; saucing.
Idioms and Phrases with sauce
sauce
In addition to the idiom beginning with sauce
also see: