Meaning and Origin
What does the name Pepper mean? Keep reading to find the user submitted meanings, dictionary definitions, and more.
User Submitted Origins
User Submitted Meanings
- According to a user from India, the name Pepper is of Indian (Sanskrit) origin and means "Priceless".
- A well-known, pungently aromatic condiment, the dried berry, either whole or powdered, of the Piper nigrum.
- [Bot] The plant which yields pepper, an East Indian woody climber (Piper nigrum), with ovate leaves and apetalous flowers in spikes opposite the leaves. The berries are red when ripe. Also, by extension, any one of the several hundred species of the genus Piper, widely dispersed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the earth.
- Any plant of the genus Capsicumof the Solanaceae family, which are unrelated to Piper), and its fruit; red pepper; chili pepper; as, the bell pepper and the jalapeno pepper both Capsicum annuum) and the habanero pepper Capsicum chinense); . These contain varying levels of the substance capsaicin C18H27O3N), which gives the peppers their hot taste. The habanero is about 25-50 times hotter than the jalapeno according to a scale developed by Wilbur Scoville in 1912. See also Capsicum and http://www.chili-pepper-plants.com/.
Note: ☞ Common pepper, or black pepper, is made from the whole berry, dried just before maturity; white pepper is made from the ripe berry after the outer skin has been removed by maceration and friction. It has less of the peculiar properties of the plant than the black pepper. Pepper is used in medicine as a carminative stimulant.
Note: ☞ The term pepper has been extended to various other fruits and plants, more or less closely resembling the true pepper, esp. to the common varieties of Capsicum. See Capsicum, and the Phrases, below.
Etymology: OE. peper, AS. pipor, L. piper, fr. Gr. pe`peri pi`peri, akin to Skr. pippala pippali
- To sprinkle or season with pepper.
- Figuratively: To shower shot or other missiles, or blows, upon; to pelt; to fill with shot, or cover with bruises or wounds; as, to pepper him with buckshot."I have pepperedtwo of them.""I am peppered, I warrant, for this world." [Shak.]
- Sweet and hot varieties of fruits of plants of the genus Capsicum
- Pungent seasoning from the berry of the common pepper plant of East India; use whole or ground
- Any of various tropical plants of the genus Capsicum bearing peppers
- Climber having dark red berries (peppercorns) when fully ripe; southern India and Sri Lanka; naturalized in northern Burma and Assam
- Attack and bombard with or as if with missiles
- Add pepper to ("pepper the soup")
From Middle English peper, piper, from Old English piper, from West Germanic *piper, 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 European 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.
- A plant of the family Piperaceae.
- (uncountable) A spice prepared from the fermented, dried, unripe berries of this plant.
- (Britain, US, Ireland and Canada) A bell pepper, a fruit of the capsicum plant: red, green, yellow or white, hollow and containing seeds, and in very spicy and mild varieties.
- (baseball) 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
- Some ballparks have signs saying "No games".
- (cryptography) 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.
pepper was also found in the following language(s): Middle English and Norwegian Bokmål