capsicum

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Any of various tropical American pepper plants of the genus Capsicum, especially any of the numerous cultivated forms of the species C. annuum and C. frutescens.
• noun The fruit of any of these plants, especially the dried pungent types used as a condiment and in medicine.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A genus of herbaceous or shrubby South American plants, natural order Solanaceæ, with a wheel-shaped corolla, projecting and converging stamens, and a many-seeded berry.
• noun [lowercase] A plant of this genus or its fruit.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Bot.) A genus of plants of many species, producing capsules or dry berries of various forms, which have an exceedingly pungent, biting taste, and when ground form the red or Cayenne pepper of commerce.
• noun Any plant of the genus Capsicum (of the Solanaceae family, which are unrelated to Piper), and its fruit; red pepper; chili pepper.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun Any of several tropical American plants, of the genus Capsicum, principally the species Capsicum annuum and Capiscum frutescens, that are cultivated as edible peppers.
• noun The spicy fruit of the above plants, the bell peppers.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun any of various tropical plants of the genus Capsicum bearing peppers
• noun chiefly tropical perennial shrubby plants having many-seeded fruits: sweet and hot peppers