sauce
/soːs/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.30 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Tomato sauce (similar to US tomato ketchup), as in
Australian usage; Indian usage; New Zealand usage; British usage; Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "apple sauce; mint sauce"
- "[Prince Paul.] […] But, believe me, you are wrong to run down cookery. For myself, the only immortality I desire is to invent a new sauce. I have never had time enough to think seriously about it, but I feel it is in me, I feel it is in me."
- "You could just use ordinary shop-bought kecap manis to marinade the meat, but making your own is easy, has a far more elegant fragrance and is, above all, such a great brag! Flavouring kecap manis is an intensely personal thing, so try this version now and next time cook the sauce down with crushed, split lemongrass and a shredded lime leaf."
- "[meat] pie and [tomato] sauce"
- "Maybe you should lay off the sauce."
- "[…] she was thinking of her first husband, who was a heel to end all heels and a constant pain in the neck to her till one night he most fortunately walked into the River Thames while under the influence of the sauce and didn't come up for days."
Etymology
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).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /soːs/
- British English: /sɔːs/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Food.