and non-Northern-European cuisines. So unless you have explicitly established that those foodstuffs are in-scope, it's pretty safe to assume that "hot" refers to temperature. "Spicy" is also more general in meaning than "piquant". -- M???Ed Jan 17 at 16:45 2 @MetaEd isn't that the essence of my second bullet? -- slim Jan 17 at 16:54 1 Well sure, if someone says, "This turkey is very hot" I would likely assume they meant temperature, but if they said, "These chili peppers are very hot" I would assume they meant spicy. The problem comes when you are trying to say that the turkey is spicy or the chili peppers have high temperature. -- Jay Jan 17 at 18:46 @z7sg?: True... I have friends who acutally say "thermally hot" and "hot-tasting" to disambiguate "hot", but they're engineers - I know most people don't talk this way. ;) -- FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Jan 17 at 16:39 +1 A good suggestion. You could also say something like "I better let this cool down a little." -- onomatomaniak Jan 17 at 16:10 I kind of prefer @onomatomaniak's suggestion as it actually describes the temperature. Saying something just came out of the oven wouldn't give me enough of a hint. -- BoltClock Jan 18 at 12:15 1 True. When you know that something you say may have ambiguous meaning, it is best to use alternative ways to express it. If "..came out of the oven" isn't good enough, use "Careful, you may burn your tongue." Or what @onomatomaniak said.