I had a conversation today with a friend. She is the Director of the city's CDC and was translating a paper from Chinese to English. She also an excellent qualified medical translator. Her medical English is better than mine.
She was confused as she knows people often use 'spicy' when they mean 'hot' referring to the capcaisin content of chillies, and wasn't sure which word to use. In Chinese, the two are very distinct. Spice is 香 and chilli hot is 辣. Heat hot is a completely different word - 热.
As she rightly pointed out, not all spices are hot. I explained that many people do use the two terms interchangeably and suggested that to be absolutely clear she could use the term 'spicy hot', which is certainly used in the UK. However, I'm not sure how widespread that is in other Englishes.
So, my question is how would you distinguish the two meanings? It is for medical purposes, but not for medical professionals, so needs to be unambiguous.
Thanks.
