English Explanatory Dictionary

spice

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. Aromatic or pungent plant matter (usually dried) used to season or flavor food.
  2. The quality of being spicy.
  3. Appeal, interest; an attribute that makes something appealing, interesting, or engaging.
  4. A psychoactive neocannabinoid.
  5. Sweets, candy.
  6. Species; kind.
  7. A characteristic touch or taste; smack; flavour.
  8. An aromatic odor.
  9. Erotic or pornographic material, usually in written form; smut.
  10. An additional input parameter used as a secondary, non-secret key in the Hasty Pudding cipher.
verb
  1. To add spice or spices to; season.
  2. To spice up.
noun
  1. plural of spouse
name
  1. Acronym of Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis, a general-purpose, open-source analog electronic circuit simulator.
name
  1. A surname.

Pronunciation

spīs /spaɪs/ en-us-spice.ogg

Word forms

spice spices spicing spiced

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *speḱ- Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *spéḱyeti Proto-Italic *spekjō Late Latin speciō Late Latin -iēs Late Latin speciēs Old French espicebor. Anglo-Norman specebor. Middle English spice English spice Inherited from Middle English spice, from Old French espice (modern épice), from Late Latin speciēs (“spice, good, ware”), from Latin speciēs (“kind, sort”). Doublet of species.

Synonyms

spiciness

Related words

five-spice powder herbs and spices spicy tooth variety is the spice of life

Derived words

allspice bespice golden spice hunger is the best spice king of spices mixed spice Montreal steak spice pondspice pudding spice pumpkin pie spice pumpkin-pie spice pumpkin spice pumpkin-spice latte pumpkin spice latte queen of spices spice bag spiceberry spicebox spice brown spicebush spice drop spice fiend spice finch spiceful spicehead spicehouse spiceland spiceless spicelike spicenut spice rack spicery spicewise spicewood spiciness spicy sugar and spice sugar and spice and everything nice table spice overspice spice up
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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