Hungarian word for ground red pepper, from Slavic papar, from Latin piper, ultimately from Sanskrit pippali — the long pepper
A powdered spice made from dried and ground red peppers, ranging from sweet to hot
From Hungarian 'paprika', derived from Serbian/Croatian 'papar' (pepper), itself from Latin 'piper' (pepper), which traces back through Greek 'peperi' to Sanskrit 'pippali' (long pepper). The word entered English from Hungarian in the 19th century, but the spice itself reached Hungary through Ottoman Turkish trade routes after the Spanish brought capsicum peppers from the Americas to Europe in the 16th century. Hungary's Szeged and Kalocsa regions became the world's most famous paprika-producing areas.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi won the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine partly for isolating vitamin C from Hungarian paprika peppers. He had tried extracting it from other sources first but found that Szeged paprika contained such high concentrations that it was ideal for his research.