peppered

1. 1
   adjective

   Seasoned or coated with pepper for flavor.

   The chef's peppered crust gave the tuna a bold, smoky bite.

   He likes his soup heavily peppered before he eats it.

   Similarseasoned, spiced

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of pepper.

   The reporters peppered the candidate with tough questions.

   Gunfire peppered the walls of the abandoned building.

   Note

   Past tense and participle share one spelling: she peppered the speech with jokes, and the speech was peppered with jokes. In the passive it takes with, which names the small things scattered, such as questions, typos or gunfire. Behind the form stand several verbs at once. One means seasoning food, another striking with shot, another sprinkling something in at intervals. There is also a slang verb meaning to thrash, and a cryptographer's verb for adding a secret value before hashing.

3. 3
   adjective

   Marked or covered with small scattered spots, as if lightly sprinkled.

   His dark beard was peppered with streaks of gray.

   The moth's peppered wings blended into the lichen-covered bark.

   Similarspeckled, flecked, dotted, spotted

   Note

   A kitchen image turned visual: the scattered dots look as if the seasoning sense had been shaken over a wing or a beard, and the peppered moth takes its name from them. The adjective is gradable, with lightly and heavily as its natural partners. Luke Eric Lassiter's Invitation to Anthropology (2006) notes that before 1900 most peppered moths were lightly peppered and a very few heavily so. The adverb measures how dense the speckling is.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3