There’s nothing surprising about the words for hot (as a temperature)/hot (as a capsaicin pepper is hot)/spicy (from various spices) being related to each other etymologically or even identical. This is how metaphor works. In fact, it’s how human thought works. We start, both in the history of human language and the developmental history of a single person, by being able to describe the most basic perceptual experiences. The perception of temperature is one of the most basic of them. When we find other perceptions that we need words for, we describe the new perceptions by analogy with the ones we already know. So because there is some vague similarity in the perception of heat and that of pepper hotness, we use the same word for them. If later we need to distinguish them, we create new words for the less basic of the perceptions.
The same in swedish
Spicy (has lots of spices) - kryddig (basically the same word, spices - kryddor)
hot - stark or starkt kryddad (strong, or strongly spiced)
The Swedish cognates to the English words “hot” and “warm” - “Het” and “varm” are mostly used for temperature.
Colibri, you know what else stimulates TRPV1? High thermal temperatures. So if we just want a word for something that stimulates TRPV1, the appropriate word is just “hot”. But all of the various things that stimulate that receptor, temperatures and spices alike, can be clearly distinguished. If you run a double-blind taste test, nearly 100% of people will be able to distinguish between a dish at a high temperature, a dish containing high levels of capsaicin, a dish containing high levels of black pepper, and a dish containing high levels of garlic. They are, scientifically speaking, different sensations, and this is not just subjective, or a matter of opinion. Apparently, these stimuli either stimulate other receptors in addition, or they stimulate the same receptors in different ways. And given that they can be distinguished, there’s no reason they shouldn’t have different words.
To be fair, Colibri originally said,
Acsenray is wrong to say “they’re three completely different sensations”, because as Colibri pointed out, they all activate a receptor in common. So while they are different sensations, they are not completely different sensations.
Picante - spicy as in food
Caliente e.g. agua caliente = hot water
Calor e.g. muy calor = hot day
PS- Spanish food in Spain isn’t very picante at all. Except for those little green peppers pimenton (smoked paprika) is about as picante as it gets.
I find it fascinating that these flavors stimulate the same receptor, because I would not have thought they were so related. For example, growing up in a Polish family, we were very used to horseradish hot. There’s no such thing as horseradish anyone in my family couldn’t eat. Meanwhile, give my mother the littlest bit of capsaicin, and she goes running for the water pitcher. Similarly, my father would trade lunches with his Mexican co-workers occasionally, and they sometimes had difficulty eating each other’s food, with Polish mustard/horseradish “spicy” being too much for the Mexican and the Mexican chile “spicy” being too much for my dad.
That said, I don’t see why one would expect a language to have distinct words for these sensations, necessarily. We could just tack on an extra adjective to fine-tune the definition of what sort of “spicy” we’re talking about, and the idea is communicated. There’s no reason they should or need to be a single word. In Polish, the words for horseradish spicy and chile spicy are the same: ostre (“sharp”). Apparently, in a lot of cultures, it’s a similar enough sensation that it’s not necessary to disambiguate with a new word.
As for just a general word for “spiced” vs “spicy,” we have that. Either use “spiced” or “well spiced”/“highly spiced” or some variant thereof. It’s not necessary to have another word, although I could the utility in having one. That’s okay–there’s ways around it in language.