Meaning & use
peppermill
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Meanings
nouncountable
A small hand-held device that crushes whole peppercorns so you can shake the ground pepper onto food.
Grammar: Countable: you can say a peppermill or two peppermills; it is often used with the, as in pass the peppermill.
Patterns
- a peppermill on the table
- fill a peppermill with peppercorns
- grind pepper in/with a peppermill
Could you pass me the peppermill? The soup needs a little more pepper.
She filled the peppermill with black peppercorns before the guests arrived.
There is a wooden peppermill and a salt shaker next to the stove.
nouncountable
A machine, usually electric and used in restaurants or factories, that grinds peppercorns in large amounts.
Grammar: Countable, and often used with a modifier such as electric or industrial to show the bigger kind.
Patterns
- an electric peppermill
- a commercial peppermill
The restaurant kitchen uses an electric peppermill because the cooks get through so much pepper.
An industrial peppermill can grind several kilos of peppercorns an hour.
Word forms
| plural | peppermills |
|---|
Common combinations
- pass the peppermill
- Please pass the peppermill — this pasta is a bit bland.
- fill a peppermill
- He filled the peppermill with fresh peppercorns and twisted the top back on.
- twist/grind the peppermill
- She twisted the peppermill twice over her salad.
- wooden peppermill
- They gave us a wooden peppermill as a wedding present.
- salt and pepper mills
- The table set includes matching salt and pepper mills.
Synonyms and how they differ
- pepper grinder
- Very close in meaning and common in American English; peppermill is the usual word when the object sits on a dining table.
- mill
- A shorter, more general word for any device that grinds something; use peppermill when you need to make clear it is for pepper.
Word family
Commonly confused: peppermill or pepper shaker?
peppermill vs pepper shaker
A pepper shaker holds already-ground pepper and sprinkles it out; a peppermill holds whole peppercorns and crushes them as you turn it.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'peppermill' correctly?
Choose one answer.
A peppermill grinds whole peppercorns, so grinding black pepper over steak fits. Option 0 fails because a peppermill is for pepper, not salt (that is a salt shaker), and options 2 and 3 treat it as a quantity or a container of liquid, which it is not.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “peppermill”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.