Pepper

How to spell pepper

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pepper

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pepper mean?

1. nounA pungent spice made from the dried berries of the pepper plant, used to season food.
2. nounA hollow, fleshy capsicum fruit eaten as a vegetable, often red, green, or yellow.
3. verbTo scatter something thickly over a surface, or to bombard with repeated questions or objects.

Pepper in a sentence

• noun

  She ground fresh black pepper over the soup.

• noun

  He sliced a red pepper for the salad.

• verb

  The reporters began to pepper the minister with questions.

• noun

  The recipe calls for a pinch of salt and pepper.

• noun

  The stuffed pepper was filled with rice and cheese.

• verb

  Hail can pepper the roof for several minutes during a storm.

Where does pepper come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Pepper is one of the oldest trade words in English, reaching back to Sanskrit pippali, which named the long pepper plant of India. From there it travelled west into Greek as peperi and into Latin as piper, both naming the prized spice that drove ancient commerce. The Romans carried the word and the goods across their empire, and it entered Old English very early as pipor, long before the Norman Conquest, which is why it feels thoroughly native rather than borrowed. Over centuries the spelling settled with a doubled middle consonant, giving the familiar pepper, and the meaning broadened from the dried berry of the pepper vine to include the unrelated capsicum vegetables that European explorers later encountered in the Americas. The verb sense, to scatter or to bombard as if sprinkling with grains, grew naturally from the image of shaking the spice over food.

How the word is built

• pepper (from Latin piper, ultimately Sanskrit pippali)
• doubled medial consonant