Chilli is so hot it gets a dictionary listing
7 December 2009
A chilli pepper bred in Dorset which became legendary for hitting one of the highest heat levels ever recorded on the Scoville scale has been listed in the Collins dictionary as one of the latest new words to enter the English language.
The Dorset Naga was included in a list of over 260 neologisms published in the Collins Dictionary's 30th gold edition. Its definition as a 'British-grown variety of the Naga Jolokia chilli pepper noted for its extreme heat' also includes a quotation from The Times warning that 'anyone foolhardy enough to eat a whole Dorset Naga would almost certainly require hospital treatment'.
Joy Michaud, who with her husband Michael bred the Dorset Naga, says its official arrival in our day-to-day vocabulary is 'really exciting'.
'Until we came up with the Dorset Naga nobody believed that a chilli could ever reach the 1 million heat level: and now it's become part of the language,' she says. 'In a very minor way, we've made a significant difference – it's a nice feeling.'
The Dorset Naga is a selection from the Naga Morich chilli from Bangladesh, developed by Joy and Michael not for its heat but for its pod shape and plant size. To their surprise, when it was officially tested for heat the readings came back at over 920,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU) - over 300,000 SHU higher than the then world record holder, the Red Savina. Other unconfirmed readings have given the Dorset Naga SHU levels of well over 1 million, rivalling the current world record holder, the closely-related Bhut Jolokia, which registers an eye-watering 1.001 million SHU.
More on the Dorset Naga