"special sauce" meaning in English

See special sauce in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: special sauces [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|-|s}} special sauce (usually uncountable, plural special sauces)
  1. A basic ingredient in McDonald's Big Mac hamburgers, a sort of Thousand Island dressing (now called Big Mac sauce by the company). Tags: uncountable, usually Categories (topical): Sauces
    Sense id: en-special_sauce-en-noun-YLvWbCCw Disambiguation of Sauces: 49 11 40 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 46 3 51 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 67 4 29 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 59 3 38
  2. (figurative) Synonym of secret sauce. Tags: figuratively, uncountable, usually Categories (topical): Sauces Synonyms: secret sauce [synonym, synonym-of]
    Sense id: en-special_sauce-en-noun-NM1CldWs Disambiguation of Sauces: 49 11 40
  3. Burger sauce. Tags: uncountable, usually Categories (topical): Sauces
    Sense id: en-special_sauce-en-noun-XTWlCB2q Disambiguation of Sauces: 49 11 40 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 46 3 51

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for special sauce meaning in English (2.9kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "special sauces",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-",
        "2": "s"
      },
      "expansion": "special sauce (usually uncountable, plural special sauces)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "46 3 51",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "67 4 29",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "59 3 38",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "49 11 40",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Sauces",
          "orig": "en:Sauces",
          "parents": [
            "Foods",
            "Eating",
            "Food and drink",
            "Human behaviour",
            "All topics",
            "Human",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2001 January, Matt Groening, “Parasites Lost”, in Futurama, season 3, episode 4",
          "text": "one day you'll be eatin' a fast-food burger.... Ever wonder what makes special sauce so special?",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A basic ingredient in McDonald's Big Mac hamburgers, a sort of Thousand Island dressing (now called Big Mac sauce by the company)."
      ],
      "id": "en-special_sauce-en-noun-YLvWbCCw",
      "links": [
        [
          "ingredient",
          "ingredient"
        ],
        [
          "McDonald's",
          "McDonald's"
        ],
        [
          "Big Mac",
          "Big Mac"
        ],
        [
          "Thousand Island dressing",
          "Thousand Island dressing"
        ],
        [
          "Big Mac sauce",
          "Big Mac sauce#English"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable",
        "usually"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "49 11 40",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Sauces",
          "orig": "en:Sauces",
          "parents": [
            "Foods",
            "Eating",
            "Food and drink",
            "Human behaviour",
            "All topics",
            "Human",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of secret sauce."
      ],
      "id": "en-special_sauce-en-noun-NM1CldWs",
      "links": [
        [
          "secret sauce",
          "secret sauce#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative) Synonym of secret sauce."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "secret sauce"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively",
        "uncountable",
        "usually"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "46 3 51",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "49 11 40",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Sauces",
          "orig": "en:Sauces",
          "parents": [
            "Foods",
            "Eating",
            "Food and drink",
            "Human behaviour",
            "All topics",
            "Human",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Burger sauce."
      ],
      "id": "en-special_sauce-en-noun-XTWlCB2q",
      "links": [
        [
          "Burger sauce",
          "burger sauce"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable",
        "usually"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "special sauce"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
    "English uncountable nouns",
    "en:Sauces"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "special sauces",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-",
        "2": "s"
      },
      "expansion": "special sauce (usually uncountable, plural special sauces)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2001 January, Matt Groening, “Parasites Lost”, in Futurama, season 3, episode 4",
          "text": "one day you'll be eatin' a fast-food burger.... Ever wonder what makes special sauce so special?",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A basic ingredient in McDonald's Big Mac hamburgers, a sort of Thousand Island dressing (now called Big Mac sauce by the company)."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "ingredient",
          "ingredient"
        ],
        [
          "McDonald's",
          "McDonald's"
        ],
        [
          "Big Mac",
          "Big Mac"
        ],
        [
          "Thousand Island dressing",
          "Thousand Island dressing"
        ],
        [
          "Big Mac sauce",
          "Big Mac sauce#English"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable",
        "usually"
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of secret sauce."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "secret sauce",
          "secret sauce#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative) Synonym of secret sauce."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "secret sauce"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively",
        "uncountable",
        "usually"
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Burger sauce."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Burger sauce",
          "burger sauce"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable",
        "usually"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "special sauce"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.