Other forms: spices
A spice is a strong-tasting powder from a plant, like cinnamon or pepper. Add spice, mixed spice, the spice trade.
A spice comes from bark, seed, root or fruit and a herb from leaves, which is the working distinction. The spice trade shaped European exploration and colonisation more than almost anything else. Whole spices keep their flavour far longer than ground ones. Note that spice and species are the same Latin word.
1nounspiceA strong-tasting powder from a plant.
“Cinnamon is the spice that gives these biscuits their warm taste.”
Patterna pinch of + spice · ground / whole spices · herbs and spices · a spice rack · spicy
spice is a flavouring.
SPICE → what turns plain RICE into something
Plain rice is boring; add one spoon of red powder and it is hot and bright — that powder is a spice.
hooks ontorice
Old French espice comes from Latin species, a kind or sort, which came to mean goods and then spices. Species is the same word.
Middle English
spice
English, today
spice
From Middle English spice. Middle English spice, from Old French espice (modern épice), from Latin speciēs (“spice, good, ware”), from Latin speciēs (“kind, sort”). a doublet of species.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA