How to say "pepper (spice)" in Arabic
LoanwordMeaningpepper (spice)
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
fulfulפלפל
فلفل
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
pilpelپِلْپِل
How the two words are related
Borrowed between the languages (or by both from a third).
Not native Semitic vocabulary — a well-traveled spice word. Sanskrit pippalī for the peppercorn spread west along ancient trade routes: one branch gave Greek péperi, source of Latin piper and English pepper; a separate branch, by way of Middle Persian, gave the reduplicated Arabic fulful and Hebrew פלפל. The resemblance between the Arabic and Hebrew forms is real, but it traces to that shared ultimate source, not to a shared Semitic root or to one language borrowing from the other.
Learn it
On the street
How people actually say it in the spoken dialects, where it differs from the standard word.
Egyptian · Cairo and the Nile Delta
Cairo: filfil (filfil iswid — 'black pepper'); it also means chili.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
Darija's (black) pepper is ibzār; felfla is the vegetable pepper or chili.
In a phrase
black pepper