sauce
/sɔːs/noun, verb
sauce is spelled S-A-U-C-E: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 20 times per million words in written English, the 4,302nd most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, sauce means “A liquid (often thickened) condiment or accompaniment to food” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of sauce is sauces.
How many letters and syllables are in sauce?
| Letters | 5: S-A-U-C-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 20 times per million words; the 4,302nd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Rhymes with | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is sauce?
Sauce appears 20 times per million words in written English, the 4,302nd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce sauce?
- UK /sɔːs/
- British /soːs/
- /sɔs/
Sauce has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-sauce.ogg, En-us-sauce.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with sauce
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: source (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Also written: source.
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with sauce?
3 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as sauce from its last stressed vowel (/ɔs/, British pronunciation):
Spelled with the same letters in another order: cause.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of sauce
- sauces plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- saucing participle, present
- sauced participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does sauce mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A liquid (often thickened) condiment or accompaniment to food.
apple sauce; mint sauce
- 2
AustraliaIndiaUKTomato sauce (similar to US tomato ketchup), as in
[meat] pie and [tomato] sauce
- 3
slangAlcohol, booze.
Maybe you should lay off the sauce.
- 4
slangVitality; capability or talent.
It's over for that guy. He lost the sauce.
- 5
Anabolic steroids.
- 6
A soft crayon for use in stump drawing or in shading with the stump.
- 7
datedCheek; impertinence; backtalk; sass.
- 8
USobsoleteslangVegetables.
- 9
Alternative form of source, often used when requesting the source of an image or other posted material.
verb
- 1
To add sauce to; to season.
- 2
To cause to relish anything, as if with a sauce; to tickle or gratify, as the palate; to please; to stimulate.
- 3
To make poignant; to give zest, flavour or interest to; to set off; to vary and render attractive.
- 4
colloquialTo treat with bitter, pert, or tart language; to be impudent or saucy to.
- 5
slangTo send or hand over.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Sauce in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does sauce come from?
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).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).