salsa
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A style of urban music originally from New York heavily influenced by Cuban dance music, jazz and rock.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sawlsuhSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsɔlsə
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
uncountablemusic
A style of urban music originally from New York heavily influenced by Cuban dance music, jazz and rock.
Spicy sauce of tomatoes and onions and chili peppers to accompany Mexican foods
countable
A spicy tomato sauce of Mexican origin, often including onions and hot peppers.
countabledance
Any of several dances performed to salsa music.
verb
intransitive
To dance the salsa.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A style of urban music originally from New York heavily influenced by Cuban dance music, jazz and rock.
Used this way, salsa is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a musical use: it is everyday language among musicians and listeners, and specialised outside that.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Music/performance
- Arts writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use salsa
- “We enjoyed some chips and spicy salsa at the party.”
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.