pepper
/ˈpɛp.ɚ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.14 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
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.
Canadian usage; British usage; American usage; Countable; Uncountable
noun
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
Example Sentences
- "Some ballparks have signs saying "No pepper games"."
- "He means to snatch the laurels from his brow, / At all his boasted pluck and prowess smile, / And give him pepper in superior style."
- "[T]he Chicken had been tapped, and bunged, and had received pepper, and had been made groggy, and had come up piping, and had endured a complication of similar strange inconveniences, until he had been gone into and finished."
- "Chew beef like breakfast (Yum) Two shanks, get 'round in seconds (Two) Be feeding my area, peppers"
- "Number plates already hot, and plus we've got like three peppers"
- "After the hailstorm, the beach was peppered with holes."
Etymology
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈpɛp.ɚ/
- British English: /ˈpɛp.ə/
Usage
- Countable
- Uncountable
- Canadian usage
- British usage
- American usage
- Slang
- Transitive verb