I grew up in India and one of my pet peeves is the use of Spicy to mean Hot (as in chilli pepper hot) in the American vocabulary. Is this the common interpretation in say French, Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, etc. ?
Yes in French.
No in Russian. Spicy is the same word as “Pointed/Pointy”.
The Spanish word is “picante”, as in Salsa Picante.
I believe “picante” means “sharp” (ETA: Or maybe “pointed/pointy” as in the Russian?), and I see similar roots in words like picador and English words like pick (as in ice-pick) and piquant.
Your question answered for a number of languages:
To clarify, “picante” is Spanish for “spicy hot”. The Spanish word for “thermal hot” is “caliente”.
Which term do you prefer? Hot?
Out of curiosity, why does it bother you? Chilli peppers contain capsaicin, which irritates the same nerves irritated by heat (among other things):
I don’t object to other terms to describe the sensation, but “heat” seems perfectly cromulent.
As an American, when I hear “spicy” I think “with lots of spices” and not necessarily hot ones. I make a chili that has a lot of spices in it, I think of it as very spicy, but it’s only hot when it first comes out of the pot. But I sure understand if people think it’s going to be hot when I describe it as spicy.
Indian languages have completely different words for (1) temperature hot, (2) chili/capsaicin hot, and (3) mustard/horseradish/wasabi hot. They’re three completely different sensations. And “spicy” means something else entirely.
Ok, same question to you.
What term do you prefer?
We’re talking about English for jalapeno heat.
There is no good word in English. And I am a native English speaker. It’s an endless frustration.
Actually, they’re not. As mentioned, capsaicin acts on the heat receptor TRPV1. So does allyl isothiocyanate, found in horseradish, mustard, and wasabi; piperine, found in black and white pepper; and allicin, found in garlic and onions.
Now there may be other compounds and flavors in these foods that modify the sensation, but the basic sensation is heat, and they all produce it by acting on the same receptors that sense hot temperatures.
A sensation is more than just the stimulation of a receptor. It’s a complete experience. You can’t make the “other compounds” that “modify the sensation” a footnote. They fundamentally change the experience.
Sorry, saying the sensations are “completely different” is not supported scientifically. The core sensation of heat is fundamentally the same, since it is produced by the same receptor. I didn’t say the other compounds were a footnote. I recognize the sensations differ due to other compounds, but there is a basic commonality between them, and that is the sensation of heat. It makes perfect sense, both scientifically and linguistically, to characterize all these compounds as “hot,” since they all produce a physiological sensation of heat.
In German, hot in the sense of temperature is ‘heiß’, and in the sense of taste, it’s ‘scharf’, which literally translates to ‘sharp’, as in knives. ‘Spicy’ would be ‘würzig’.
I’m sorry, but you can’t so easily lock perception into place this way. Human sensations are far too complex and subtle and happen mostly in the brain. You’re describing a common mechanism for transmission of a stimulus, but that tells me nothing about what I feel when I experience those flavors.
I’ll accept that some of these flavors are of a common category of flavors—which is why we talk about them together—but I reject that they are “fundamentally the same” in terms of the eating experience.
The chili/capsaicin flavor might be accompanied by a feeling of heat, but its primary component in terms of flavor is its burn, which is not the burn of scalding heat. The mustard/horseradish/wasabi flavor might be accompanied by a feeling of heat, but its primary component in terms of its flavor is its sinus-clearing effervescence.
To call both those flavors with the same word that we use for simple high temperatures reflects a very anemic linguistic inventory in our language in this category of sensations. It’s simply pathetic. We have been wise enough to adopt “umami” for a flavor sensation that we didn’t have a word for. It’s time to do the same for chilis and horseradish (and alliums, perhaps).
Okay, let me give an example :
1> Say I add a few threads of Saffron (a spice) to rice during cooking it. Will the cooked rice be spicy or hot or both per your definition ?
2> what if I added a few Cloves (a spice) with the Saffron in 1 - is it now spicy or hot or both ?
3> What if I added a few Cloves, few peppercorns with the few threads of Saffron in 1. Is it now hot ?
UK here, yes if something was marked as “spicy” I’d expect it to be chili hot.
I’m not sure we have a word that specifically relates to something with a lot of non-hot spices in it.
We might use spicy in those cases but I suspect it would confuse more than it clarifies.
Ditto NZ, agreed.
Spiced? As in “spiced wine” aka mulled wine… a variety of spices but unlikely to burn… unless consumed too quickly. 
There are several terms I might use for food per the examples am77494 suggested… I might call saffron rice “aromatic”, with the cloves perhaps “piquant”… once the peppercorns are in there “spicy” does seem appropriate.