salsa

Etymology

It is borrowed from Spanish salsa (“sauce”),^[2][3][4][5] from Vulgar Latin *salsa (“condiment”),^[3][4] originally the feminine of Latin salsus (“salted”),^[6][7][8] which comes from sāl (“salt”), a relative of salt.^[7][3] The same Vulgar Latin word gave salsa and, through Old French sauce, the English sauce.^[7][8] The music sense came from American Spanish,^[2][9][10] and Etymonline treats it as a fresh borrowing of 1975.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A sauce served with meat, in Spanish cooking: 1846, in R. Ford's Gatherings from Spain.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In American Spanish the word was used especially for a relish of chopped ingredients,^[3] and in English it now usually means the spicy tomato sauce of Mexican cooking;^[6][5] Merriam-Webster dates this sense to about 1962.^[6] The Shorter Oxford also records salsa verde, an Italian green sauce of olive oil, garlic, capers and parsley, or a Mexican sauce of chopped onion and coriander.^[11] In the 1970s salsa became the name of a Latin American dance music with elements of jazz and rock, and of the dance done to it.^[2][4][5] Etymonline explains the name by the music being a "blend" of styles,^[3] and Dictionary.com likewise says it was probably so called for its mixture of styles.^[12]

Timeline

• 1846 – a sauce served with meat, in Spanish cooking.^[2][3]
• c. 1962 – a spicy sauce of chopped tomatoes, onions and peppers.^[6]
• 1975 – a dance music of Latin American origin, and the dance performed to it.^[2][3][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A spicy sauce of chopped tomatoes, onions and peppers, served especially with Mexican food: a bowl of salsa and chips.^[6][5]
2. A similar sauce made mainly from something other than tomatoes, such as fruit.^[6]
3. A popular dance music of Latin American origin that has taken in elements of jazz, rhythm and blues and rock.^[6][2][5]
4. A dance performed to this music.^[5][2]

Related words

• salt
• sauce
• salad
• salary
• sausage
• saucy

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
6. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House