To season heavily with pepper or to sprinkle pepper on something; to scatter or dot as if with pepper.
From 'be-' prefix + 'pepper'. In Early Modern cooking and figurative language, this verb meant to coat with pepper or, metaphorically, to scatter things thickly like pepper grains.
Medieval cooks actually used words like this—'bepeppered' meats were a sign of wealth since pepper was extremely expensive and exotic, worth more than gold!
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.