Origin and history of spicy

spicy(adj.)

1560s, "of the nature of spice," from spice (n.) + -y (2). In reference to flowers, breezes, etc., "sweet-smelling," from 1640s, also from 1640s as "producing or abounding in spice." The figurative sense of "racy, salacious" dates from 1844. Earlier it was "full of spirit" (by 1828), especially of horses. Meaning "hot flavored (as of chile peppers, etc.)" by 1927. Related: Spiciness.

The earlier adjective was spiced "flavored with spice" (early 14c.), which had a figurative sense of "over-nice, fastidious" (late 14c.) in spiced conscience.

also from 1560s

Entries linking to spicy

spice(n.)

c. 1200, "vegetable substance aromatic or pungent to the taste added to food or drink to enhance the flavor," also "a spice used as a medication or an alchemical ingredient," from Anglo-French spece, Old French espice (Modern French épice), from Late Latin species (plural) "spices, goods, wares," in classical Latin "kind, sort" (see species, which is a doublet).

From c. 1300 as "an aromatic spice," also "spices as commodities;" from early 14c. as "a spice-bearing plant." Of odors or perfumes by 1560s. The figurative sense of "attractive or enjoyable variation" is from 13c.; that of "slight touch or trace of something" is recorded from 1530s. The meaning "specimen, sample" is from 1790. Early druggists recognized four "types" of spices: saffron, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg.

-y(2)

very common adjective suffix, "full of, covered with, or characterized by" the thing expressed by the noun, Middle English -i, from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga-, from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Germanic cognates include Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs.

It was used from 13c. with verbs (drowsy, clingy), and by 15c. with other adjectives (crispy). Chiefly with monosyllables; with more than two the effect tends to become comedic.

Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets after the loss of grammatically empty but metrically useful -e in late Middle English. Verse-writers adapted to -y forms, often artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain" (and the huge plain would have been a metrical balk).

After Coleridge's criticism of it as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to make it work, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest.

Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survives, he writes, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regards as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted shorter forms.