peppering

Pluralpepperings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A light sprinkling or spray of small things scattered over a surface or target, such as pepper specks, bullets, or questions.

   A light peppering of buckshot marked the old fence post.

   The reporter faced a peppering of questions before he reached the door.

   Similarsprinkling, scattering, spray, volley, barrage

   Note

   The noun leans on the image of small shot: a scatter of hits, none heavy on its own. Colburn's New Monthly Magazine in 1840 mocks "the pepperings from the small shot of female eloquence," carrying the gunfire picture straight into speech. It is countable and takes of (a peppering of freckles, a peppering of criticism), and the plural pepperings suggests repeated bursts rather than one spray.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of pepper.

   Reporters were peppering the senator with questions all afternoon.

   He kept peppering the conversation with jokes nobody asked for.

   Note

   Every use of the verb pepper passes through this form, and nearly all of them take an object: a cook peppering a stew, gunfire peppering a wall, a speaker peppering a talk with asides. In slang it can mean beating or thrashing someone, and in computing, peppering means adding a pepper value to data before it is hashed. As a noun, the same spelling names the scattered spray itself.

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