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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

pepper.

A plant of the family Piperaceae.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈpɛp.ə/Received-Pronunciation[ˈpʰɛp.ə]Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɛp.ɚ/Canada, General-American[ˈpʰɛp.ɚ]Canada, General-American
  1. A plant of the family Piperaceae.

    countable · uncountable
  2. A spice prepared from the fermented, dried, unripe berries of this plant.

    uncountable
  3. A fruit of the capsicum plant: red, green, yellow or white, hollow and containing seeds, and in a wide range of mild (sweet, nonspicy) to hot (spicy) varieties.

    Canada · Ireland · UK · US · countable · uncountable
  4. A game used by baseball players to warm up where fielders standing close to a batter rapidly return the batted ball to be hit again

    countable · uncountable
    Some ballparks have signs saying "No pepper games".
  5. A randomly-generated value that is added to another value (such as a password) prior to hashing. Unlike a salt, a new one is generated for each value and it is held separately from the value.

    countable · uncountable
  6. A beating; a thrashing.

    countable · slang · uncountable
  7. A shotgun.

    Multicultural-London-English · countable · slang · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English peper, piper, from Old English piper, from Proto-West Germanic *pipar, from Latin piper, from Ancient Greek πέπερι (péperi), from an Indo-Aryan source; compare Sanskrit पिप्पलि (pippali, “long pepper”), ultimately from Dravidian; compare Tamil திப்பலி (tippali). 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, Norwegian Bokmål pepper, Norwegian Nynorsk pepar, Swedish peppar, Icelandic pipar. Doublet of falafel and peepul.

verb/ˈpɛp.ə/Received-Pronunciation[ˈpʰɛp.ə]Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɛp.ɚ/Canada, General-American[ˈpʰɛp.ɚ]Canada, General-American
  1. To add pepper to.

    transitive
  2. To strike with something made up of small particles.

    transitive
  3. To cover with lots of (something made up of small things).

    transitive
    After the hailstorm, the beach was peppered with holes.
  4. To add (something) at frequent intervals.

    transitive
    He liked to pepper long words throughout his conversation.
  5. To beat or thrash.

    slang · transitive
  6. To use a pepper (type of value used prior to hashing).

  7. To shoot (upon) with the dotty.

    Multicultural-London-English · slang · transitive
  8. To write accents or disambiguating marks in script.

    slang · transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English peper, piper, from Old English piper, from Proto-West Germanic *pipar, from Latin piper, from Ancient Greek πέπερι (péperi), from an Indo-Aryan source; compare Sanskrit पिप्पलि (pippali, “long pepper”), ultimately from Dravidian; compare Tamil திப்பலி (tippali). 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, Norwegian Bokmål pepper, Norwegian Nynorsk pepar, Swedish peppar, Icelandic pipar. Doublet of falafel and peepul.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.