sauce

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A thick or liquid mixture served with or on food to add flavour.

   She poured tomato sauce over the pasta.

2. 2
   noun

   Alcoholic drink (informal).

   Maybe you should lay off the sauce for a while.

3. 3
   noun

   Cheeky or rude talk; impertinence (informal).

   Don't give me any sauce, young man!

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Sauce ultimately goes back to Latin sal, “salt.” In the Middle Ages, a saucer was used to hold sauces or condiments and was usually made of metal. Saucy originally meant “savoury” or “flavoured with a sauce”; in the early 16th century it came to mean “impudent” or “presumptuous,” later mellowing to “cheeky” and acquiring suggestive overtones.

PIE word *sḗh₂l From Middle English sauce, from Old French sause, from Vulgar Latin *salsa, noun use of the feminine of Latin salsus (“salted”), past participle of saliō (“to salt”), from sal. Doublet of salsa. For the meaning development compare Ancient Greek ἥδυσμα (hḗdusma) ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *swéh₂dus (whence also English sweet).

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary