Nope. Either spelling is correct for the pepper.
Epicé (hot from chile) vs chaud (hot from temperature) in french. Since “epicé” means “spicy”, I assume that theorically you could call that way a dish which contain spices that aren’t hot, but it’s never used in this way. “Un plat épicé” always refers to a hot dish. “Piquant” is also used, but usually refers to sauces, not dishes.
In Hungarian, spicy hot is *csípős *. Another word sometimes used is erős, meaning “strong,” literally. Temperature hot is meleg (also a slang word meaning “gay.”) Pikáns can also mean spicy, but is closer to “pungent” or highly seasoned. If a dish contains a lot of spices, but is not necessarily hot (like mild Indian curries), you can use the word fűszeres, which is literally “spicy,” as in, full of spices.
In Polish, you have ostre to mean “spicy hot.” It literally means “sharp.” For temperature hot, you use the word gorace. (There’s a little tail on the ‘a’ that I don’t know how to make.)
Sorry. Forró is temperature hot. Meleg is warm. But when it’s hot outside, you use the term meleg rather than forró, hence my brain fart.
Savoury, zesty, seasoned… these words can imply some mixture of spices. Saying “highly seasoned, very zesty” gets the idea across.
Hot from temperature… “piping hot”, scalding, “high temperature”, “fresh from the oven”… no great way to say it. Words like boiling, incandescant, hot, burning have been bastardized by the spicy hot crowd.
Peppery still implies hot from chile. Pungent is a good word, but not used around here much. Piquant works (and is already an English word).
I’d say that things that are “spicy” in the way that cider or spaghetti sauce are are considered “savory” rather than “spicy.”
“Scald: to burn as if with hot liquid or steam.” From the Latin “calidus” meaning warm, which is also the root of the Spanish “caliente”. Perfectly good word for hot chicken stew.
“Savory” works for spaghetti sauces (garlic, onion, basil, mushrooms, and whatnot are savory), but not so much with cinnamon-spiced stuff. I would never consider cider to be savory.
Savory is a “sort of opposite” to sweet - that is, not sweet, but appealing and aromatic. Cinnamon, while not sweet, accents sweetness in a charming way; I can’t imagine it being described as “savory”.
(Yes, it’s bitter and aromatic, which satisfies the dictionary. It’s still not savory, damn it!)
I don’t give a damn about Latin roots. The OP asked for a word meaning “hot from peppers”, and “scalding” isn’t it.
Further, “scalding” is only descriptive of temperature over a certain range - hot enough to cook flesh - near boiling. If you serve, say, soups at these temperatures, I bet you’re not a very popular host. And I’ll bet’cha your cream soups break something awful.
While black tea should be served scalding (after being poured boiling, and allowed to steep), I would not use it as a general term for anything served at a hot temperature. Neither would anyone else who, like, cooks things that don’t have instructions printed on the back of the box.
“Piping hot” works okay for anything served too hot to snarf quickly, but “scalding” does not. For that matter, “hot” works just fine for foods served at high temperature - like I said, that wasn’t the question at hand.
-Further-, “scalding”, our word of the day, remember, has a negative connotation in the English language, in a way that even “boiling” does not. Perhaps that’s not true in Latin, but you’re not impressing the ancient Romans reading this message board. It’s just not a good, descriptive word for what the OP wasn’t looking for.
If you’re actually interested in -contributing-, rub your working brain cells together with an actual reading of the OP and see if maybe you can come up with an answer aside from an almost-clever one-liner.
quothz, I really don’t know why you’re so hostile about this, but rather than derail this thread I’ve addressed your comments over here.
This discussion is getting pretty piquant, so before things get too heated here…
Another good French word - relevé which avoids the ambiguity of the piquant type words, which are derived from the idea of stinging.
If you say a dish is relevé it refers only to the well known peppery tang, and not to any other spicy flavor. A very literal alternative would be pimenté - French (and other Romance languages) distinguishes between piments which are chili type peppers and poivre, which is peppercorn.
You both meant to use the correct spelling, chilli, right?
Yeah, I know. They are all good. Chilli is best though. 
Hmmm… The spanish my parents speak use the word quemoso to describe chile-hot. Anyone else hear of that term?
quothz, such language is not permitted in GQ. Do not repeat this.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
In both Hindi and Urdu, there is a clear distinction between gar[sup]a[/sup]m meaning ‘temperature hot’ and tez meaning ‘capsaicin hot’. I’m pretty sure in the Hindi movie Mirch Masala I heard the workers at the chili pepper factory saying “Yih mirch bara tez hai” (these peppers are awful hot).
Mirch is the word for ‘pepper’ but it applies to both Piper spp. (black peppercorns etc.) and Capsicum frutescens (cayenne/chili). You have to tell them apart by saying kali mirch for black pepper and lal mirch for red pepper. Hot chili pepper is tez mirch.
Tez is pronounced like the beginning of the word “Taser.”
The word tez (from Persian) has a wide range of meanings, including ‘sharp’, ‘piercing’, ‘loud’, ‘bright’, ‘acrid’, ‘strong’, ‘passionate’, ‘impetuous’, ‘clever’, ‘fast’, and ‘hot’ in a figurative sense (like “hot on the trail”) as well as in a taste sense. Tez is a cognate of Sanskrit tejas which means ‘vigorous energy, fire, ardor, brilliance’. Tejas seems appropriate for Tex-Mex chili too. ¡Olé!
The word garam (from Persian garm, which is a cognate of English warm), basically means temperature hot, but also applies to drugs and foods which stimulate the body’s metabolism. Actually, garam masala isn’t called that because of hot taste in the spices, but because the spices are thought to raise the body’s metabolism.
Yes, all three are correct, but the spelling “chilli” is mostly found in the UK (and Commonwealth). Chile is the spelling used in Spanish, which also calls them aji.
More information about chilies can be found in my Staff Report: Are birds immune to hot pepper?
Swedish distinguishes. ‘Varm’ or ‘het’ refer to temperature, while ‘stark’ (= ‘strong’) or ‘kryddstark’ (‘krydda’ = ‘spice’) refers to spicy-hot.
Heck, in some parts of the country, people (like me) draw a distinction between “chile” and “chili”. “Chile” is the vegetable (fruit, I suppose, technically) and “chili” is the meat/bean/spices mix. It’s like the difference between real Mexican or New Mexican food and Tex-Mex. Here’s an interesting page.
After receiving an email about this topic (!) I looked ‘chile’ up in my dictionary (Collins English). According to Collins, ‘chile’ is listed as an alternate in English for what is usually spelt ‘chilli’, alsthough the Spanich chile con carne is also mentioned. I was surprised to see the double-L spelling; I don’t remember seeing this in use in Toronto. It seems to me that we always spell the food ‘chili’.
I am now confused. Perhaps I should go to more Mexican restaurants. 
Great post except for that line.
Boo! You should be ashamed of yourself. 
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