острый на вкус
“острый на вкус” (ostryy na vkus) — spicy, hot in Russian. Adjective, level A1. Ostryy means "sharp" and covers everything from pepper to wit. Perech ostryy — "the pepper is hot", and you will want water. In a live sentence: “Перец острый на вкус, пить хочу” — The pepper is hot, I want a drink. Written with the characters о, с, т, р, ы, й, н, а, в, к, у, с. A word from the everyday Russian course, level A1.
In short
| Written in Russian | острый на вкус |
| Read in Latin letters | ostryy na vkus |
| Translation | spicy, hot |
| Part of speech | adjective |
| Level | A1 |
Why it looks that way
Ostryy means "sharp" and covers everything from pepper to wit. Perech ostryy — "the pepper is hot", and you will want water.
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- Перец острый на вкус, пить хочуPerets ostryy na vkus, pit khochuThe pepper is hot, I want a drink
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “spicy, hot” in Russian?
«острый на вкус», read “ostryy na vkus”. In a live sentence: “Перец острый на вкус, пить хочу” — The pepper is hot, I want a drink. Adjective, level A1; written with the characters о, с, т, р, ы, й, н, а, в, к, у, с.
How is “острый на вкус” written in Latin letters?
ostryy na vkus. This is a practical spelling — you need it to read aloud and be understood, not to meet an academic standard.
Why does this word look the way it does?
Ostryy means "sharp" and covers everything from pepper to wit. Perech ostryy — "the pepper is hot", and you will want water. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.