pepper

Most people first think of the dark spice shaken over eggs, soup, or fries. That is one common meaning: a hot seasoning made from dried peppercorns, usually black or white. But the word is also used for bell peppers and chili peppers, the glossy fruits that can be sweet, mild, or very hot. On top of that, "pepper" also works as a verb. You can pepper a meal with the spice, pepper the ground with seeds, or pepper someone with quick questions.

The word "pepper" has several everyday uses, and context does a lot of the work. In one very common sense, it means the sharp seasoning made from dried berries of the Piper nigrum plant. This is the black, white, or green pepper used at the table and in cooking. A recipe might tell you to add salt and pepper, or someone might ask you to pass the pepper shaker.

The same word is also widely used for the fruits of Capsicum plants. In this sense, it can mean a bell pepper, which is usually sweet and mild, or a chili pepper, which may be mildly warm or extremely hot. So in a grocery store, peppers may be green, red, yellow, long, small, sweet, or fiery. Botanically, these are not the same as black peppercorns, but in normal English they share the same name.

"Pepper" is also a common verb. It can mean to cover something with many small bits, as in "Snow peppered the road" or "The field was peppered with flowers." It can also mean to hit or fill something again and again, especially in phrases like "The reporter peppered the coach with questions." In some contexts, it even means to fire many shots or blows in quick succession.

So this is a word that moves easily from the kitchen to the garden to lively description. Sometimes it is a spice, sometimes a sweet or hot fruit, and sometimes it paints the picture of many small things landing quickly all over a place.