In English, saying a dish is “hot” can mean either it’s very warm (temperature-wise), or it’s very spicy (lots of “heat” from peppers). Further, saying something is “spicy” can mean it has lots of spices (cinnamon, cloves, etc.), or that it has a lot of “heat” from capsaicin, piperine, etc.
If you speak a language other than English, do you have words differentiating the different concepts?
Bengali –
Hot (temperature) —gorom
Hot (chili heat/capsaicin) — jhal
Hot (mustard/wasabi heat) — jhãj
Spices — moshla
Nitpick: differentiate among (three or more). Between is for two things.
Korean certainly does.
Is it possible to share them here phonetically? Curious how different they are.
Bit awkward but here goes:
Hot (warm): Tugupta
Hot (spicy): Maepta
Spicy (lots of spices): Yangneume mahnta
In Spanish, as many can tell you, calorically hot is “caliente” (“hot”), while spicy things (the same range of flavors as in English – capsicum, but also to some degree cinnamon, etc.) are “picante” (they “prick” your tongue). Think of the “picador” – the guy who “pokes” or “pricks” the bull during a bullfight.
And, I disagree that English “spicy” can mean “with lots of spices (but not necessarily ‘picante’)”. The word I’ve encountered for the idea you describe is usually “spiced,” or sometimes “strongly flavored.” In my experience, “spicy” always means “picante.”
I know that Mandarin Chinese distinguishes between hot (spicy) and hot (temperature). Not sure about about hot-spicy vs. lots-of-spices-spicy.
English has been using between in the context of more than two items for over a thousand years. It is only in the last 150 years that the rule you refer to has been baselessly fabricated and perpetuated. Good writers like Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen and T.S. Eliot did not follow this made-up rule. See the entry for “between” in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.
There’s not really “a word” for spicy that means “lots of spices.” What Qin wrote is just a phrase that literally means “lots of condiments/seasoning”. Spice is hyang-shin-ryo, not yang-nyom.
I don’t know any Spanish beyond just a few words.
I always pictured that “picante” means “sharp”. As in salsa picante = sharp sauce
I knew the word picador, and also some English words with similar sounds, like pick (as in pick-axe) and piquant.
Is “sharp” a reasonable understanding of picante?
I disagree with your disagreement. In my experience, “spicy” can mean “lots of cinnamon,” for exampe, though 95% of the time it does mean spicy-hot.
With the aid of Google Translate and my 18-year old informant (who’s leaving Mr. and Mrs. Septimus for University soon :eek: ) I’ll report on a few Thai words:
ร้อน (‘rorn’) - hot
เผ็ด (‘phet’) - spicy-hot
เผ็ดร้อน (‘phet-rorn’) - spicy-hot, leading to hot sensation inside
รสจัด (‘rot-chat’) - very flavored (peppery and tart)
ฉุน (‘chun’) - spicy enough to make one sneeze
แซ่บ (‘saap’) - deliciously spicy
The last is a borrowed word, coming from Laotian where the word means simply ‘delicious.’
Borrowing is common in Thai. My informant tells me that teenagers have recently coined a new word by combining Laotian ‘saap’ with English ‘over’ :
แซ่บเวอร์ (‘saap-wur’) - superlative, usually complimentary, unrelated to food. Here’s a Google hit from searching แซ่บเวอร์
No. “Sharp” as in a sharp knife, would mean “afilado” (sharpened), a word that would make no sense when describing food.
In German, it’s “heiß” for temperature, “scharf” (sharp) for hot/spicy, and I don’t think there’s a word for spice-spicy that conveys what you mean. There’s “würzig” (literally spicy), but that doesn’t translate to “lots of spices”, it’s more like flavorful or savory.
In English we have the word ‘aromatic’, which can be (and is) used to describe spicy-but-not-hot-spicy
Right. Or, “agudo” – sharp like a pointy rock, spear, etc. Not used to describe the flavor of food.
And sometimes “savory” is sort of used in this way. (ETA: Ninja’d, sort of, by Pitchmeister),
Sr. Siete already answered this well. I’ll add that the context you most often come across the verb “picar,” besides spicy food, is insect bites. That is, insects don’t bite – they prick. “Me picó un mosco” – “a mosquito bit me.”
A popular drug to get rid of human intestinal worms had a commercial “Si te pica la colita…,” meaning “if your rear end is itchy…”. So, “picar” has connotations of itchiness which may, for some Spanish speakers, spill over (perhaps subconsciously) into how they process the concept of “spiciness” (similar to, but not as directly, as we English speakers process it on some level as “heat”).
(I should add that there’s another way to say “itch” in Spanish – “dar comezón”. So, “picar” conveys an especially “pricky” kind of itchiness. You could say it conveys in one word the English phrase “itching and burning” seen on tubes of medical creams. Which brings us back to extended uses of “heat” in English!).
Spanish:
Hot (temperature): Caliente
Hot (spicy): Picante
Spicy: Especiado
