The word pepper has several meanings:

1. A spice that makes food taste sharp and slightly hot. Black pepper comes from dried peppercorns, tiny berries that grow on vines in tropical regions. When you grind these peppercorns, you get the familiar black specks people shake onto their eggs or pasta. White pepper comes from the same plant but tastes milder. People have valued pepper so highly throughout history that it was once worth its weight in gold and sparked exploration of new trade routes to Asia.
2. A vegetable that grows in many colors: green, red, yellow, orange, and even purple. Bell peppers taste sweet and crunchy, while jalapeño and habanero peppers taste spicy hot. The “heat” in spicy peppers comes from a chemical called capsaicin. Despite sharing a name, bell peppers and peppercorns come from completely different plants.
3. To scatter or sprinkle something repeatedly, like drops of rain or questions. A teacher might pepper students with questions during a discussion. A speaker might pepper their talk with jokes. When something is peppered with holes or marks, those marks are scattered across it like pepper sprinkled on food.