Other forms: peppers
A pepper is the hollow red, green, or yellow vegetable, and also a spicy powder. Red peppers, black pepper, pepper the sauce.
The two are unrelated plants: black pepper is a dried berry from a vine and the vegetable is a capsicum from the Americas, named pepper by Columbus because it was hot. Green, red and yellow peppers are often the same fruit at different ripeness. Note peppercorn, and to pepper, meaning to scatter.
1nounpepperA hollow sweet vegetable, red, green or yellow.
“Chop a red pepper and an onion and fry them together.”
2nounhotA hot spice ground from dried berries.
“Add a pinch of salt and pepper to the soup.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
pepper is a vegetable, or a spice.
Also accepted in games: bell pepper
Old English piper comes from Latin piper, from Greek, from an Indian source. Columbus applied the name to the American capsicum.
Ancient Greek
πέπερι
Latin
piper
Proto-West Germanic
*pipar
Old English
piper
Middle English
peper
English, today
pepper
From Middle English peper, piper, from Old English piper, from Proto-West Germanic pipar, from Latin piper, from Ancient Greek πέπερι, from an inc - source; compare Sanskrit पिप्पलि (“long pepper”), ultimately from dra; compare Tamil திப்பலி. The name was given to the capsicum fruit because of its unusual spicy taste, not unlike the Old World spice. Cognate with Scots pepar, stq Pieper, West Frisian piper, Dutch peper, German Low German Peper, German Pfeffer, Danish peber, Norwegian Bokmål pepper, Norwegian Nynorsk pepar, Swedish peppar, Icelandic pipar. a doublet of falafel and peepul.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA