Query: Slang "Awesome sauce!"

[Garson O'Toole]

There are some matches in Google Books and Amazon Look Inside (ALI)
that might be suggestive. The first is in an essay in a book about the
Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series phenomenon. The essay by Rachel
Caine is titled "The Great Debate" and has a copyright date 2008
according to ALI:

MEL: Damn straight. First of all, let's get right to the subject of
this debate. Twilight is a completely awesome book. Bella: awesome.
All her friends: awesome. The town: awesome.

PSYCHOSISTER23: Get to the point.

MEL: I am, keep your thong on already. [deep breath] Twilight is an
awesome book because Edward Cullen is made of awesome, with awesome
sauce and awesome sprinkle topping, and that's all there is to it.

Portions of the audience erupt into wild cheers; other portions seem
deeply confused. Mel and Psychosister23 high-five.

[Excerpt from "A New Dawn: Your Favorite Authors on Stephenie Meyer's
Twilight Saga: Completely Unauthorized" (2009)]

It is possible "awesome sauce" was already in use when this was
written, but I think it still suggests a mechanism that might have
been used earlier as part of an evolutionary process leading to the
modern usage.

Here is a 2010 raw Google Books match that also suggests the same mechanism.

Burned - Page 39
P. C. Cast, Kristin Cast - 2010 - 384 pages - Preview
He was, as my BFF Kayla would say, “a hottie covered with awesome
sauce.” Okay, yum! Even though my head was kinda fuzzy, I felt warm
and happy
http://books.google.com/books?id=AkxcPzyp5lgC&q=awesome#v=snippet&


On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Gerald Cohen <gcohen at mst.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Gerald Cohen <gcohen at MST.EDU>
> Subject:      Query: Slang "Awesome sauce!"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A faculty member in my department was exuberant about the achievements of
> several of her colleagues and wrote:
>
> 'As my 16 year old would say: "AWESOME SAUCE!".'
>
> I see "sauce" in urbandictionary.com but am still not sure how it came to
> represent something terrific.  Would someone perhaps know?
>
> Gerald Cohen
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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