lost in the sauce

English

Adjective

lost in the sauce (not comparable)

1. (US, slang) Out of it, lost, e.g. due to intoxication, aimlessness, or being bewildered or distracted.
   • 2020, Sherika Moore, Black Love, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN:

     Our talks over shots of Patrón is what I will miss most. You can't sit and have intellectual, intelligent conversations with some woman in our generation. They are still lost in the sauce and looking for purpose.

   • 2021, Tee, Trailblazing, Fulton Books, Inc. (→ISBN):

     As soon as Troy saw Jermel the next day, he went at him. “Dogg, what type of crash [is] dummy on?” “Ain't nobody crashing! You just been lost in the sauce, dogg. I handled what needed ta be handled.”

   • 2021, Cissy Jones, Finding My Way Back To Me, Bowker, →ISBN:

     Yet still lost in the sauce. I had no clue who I was and how I wanted to be loved. That was the triggering moment when I felt that something had to change. I still did not know who I was and what I wanted.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:lost in the sauce.
2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see lost,‎ sauce.
   • 2010, Nadejda Reilly, Ukrainian Cuisine with an American Touch and Ingredients, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, page 273:

     Cooking Suggestion To prevent the cheese from getting lost in the sauce or burning, always add the sliced or shredded cheese at the end of the cooking.

   • 2012, G. Y. Dryansky, Joanne Dryansky, Coquilles, Calva, & Crème: Exploring France's Culinary Heritage: A Love Affair with French Food, Open Road Media, →ISBN:

     The flesh of the lamprey is fragile and can get lost in the sauce if the dish is stirred while cooking, which we'd been warned against in our session. The taste is often described as also “delicate.”

   • 2018, Marie Armenia, The Audacious Molly Bruno: Amazing Stories from the Life of a Powerful Woman of Prayer, FaithWords, →ISBN:

     The meatball maker never intends for the meatball to give up its new and unique identity and be lost in the sauce.

Further reading

• Robert Allen Palmatier (2000) Food: A Dictionary of Literal and Nonliteral Terms, Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 313: “Some examples of the alcohol-sauce connection are sauce parlor ("a bar"), on the sauce ("drinking regularly"), hit the sauce ("to drink heavily"), sauced ("drunk"), and lost in the sauce ("totally out of it").”
• Richard A. Spears (2005) McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions: The Most Up-to-Date Reference for the Nonstandard Usage, Popular Jargon, and Vulgarisms of Contempos, McGraw Hill Professional, →ISBN, page 220: “lost in the sauce mod. alcohol intoxicated and bewildered. Sally got lost in the sauce at the party and made quite a spectacle of herself”
• Tom Dalzell (2008) The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English, Routledge, →ISBN, page 631: “lost in the sauce adjective daydreaming, completely inattentive US, 1988”