pepper

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A spice with a hot taste, made from dried berries and used to season food.

   She added a little salt and pepper to the soup.

2. 2
   noun

   A hollow vegetable, green, red, or yellow, that can be sweet or hot.

   He chopped a red pepper into the salad.

3. 3
   verb

   To add pepper to food.

   Remember to pepper the soup before serving.

4. 4
   verb

   To scatter or cover something with many small things.

   He liked to pepper his speech with long, unusual words.

From Middle English peper, piper, from Old English piper, from Proto-West Germanic *pipar, from Latin piper, from an Indo-Aryan source; compare Sanskrit पिप्पलि (pippali, “long pepper”). The name was given to the capsicum fruit because of its unusual spicy taste, not unlike the Old World spice. Cognate with Scots pepar, Saterland Frisian Pieper, West Frisian piper, Dutch peper, German Low German Peper, German Pfeffer, Danish peber, Swedish peppar, Icelandic pipar. Doublet of falafel and peepul.

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