spice
spices; spiced; spicing
You can spice up your meal with chili powder — or you can spice up your room with a disco ball! Spice is usually a flavoring for food, but you can add spice to other things by jazzing them up.
Spices make your food more interesting and flavorful. Something that increases the excitement in other parts of life can also be called spice, like when the rivalry between two basketball players adds spice to the game. You can spice things up when you're telling a story by adding colorful details.
Definitions of spice
-
any of a variety of pungent aromatic vegetable substances used for flavoring food
-
types:
- show 10 types...
- hide 10 types...
-
five spice powder
Chinese seasoning made by grinding star anise and fennel and pepper and cloves and cinnamon
-
allspice
ground dried berrylike fruit of a West Indian allspice tree; suggesting combined flavors of cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves
-
cinnamon
spice from the dried aromatic bark of the Ceylon cinnamon tree; used as rolled strips or ground
-
clove
spice from dried unopened flower bud of the clove tree; used whole or ground
-
fennel
fennel seeds are ground and used as a spice or as an ingredient of a spice mixture
-
ginger, powdered ginger
dried ground gingerroot
-
mace
spice made from the dried fleshy covering of the nutmeg seed
-
nutmeg
hard aromatic seed of the nutmeg tree used as spice when grated or ground
-
Chinese anise, star anise, star aniseed
anise-scented star-shaped fruit or seed used in Asian cooking and medicine
-
stick cinnamon
dried rolled strips of cinnamon bark
-
aromatic substances of vegetable origin used as a preservative
-
types:
-
stacte
(Old Testament) one of several sweet-smelling spices used in incense
-
type of:
-
preservative
a chemical compound that is added to protect against decay or decomposition
-
stacte
-
the property of being seasoned with spice and so highly flavored
-
add herbs or spices to
-
make more interesting or flavorful
DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘spice'.
Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors.
Send us feedback
Word Family
EDITOR'S CHOICE
Look up spice for the last time
Close your vocabulary gaps with personalized learning that focuses on teaching the words you need to know.
