in my word-map of the world; the word spice is the super-category that contains all flavoury herbs and spices. Technically spices are not all spicy; and thats probably where the problem lies. I have no idea how we came to call the "hot spices" spicy. chilli/pepper/curry. When cinnamon is another spicy which is not very spicy at all.

mainly keeping in mind that spice /= spicy. I guess the only explanation is that popular language is playing catch up with the world. Good defining terms only come out of a need to separate them. Renaming spices isn't as important as "what do we call this binary-i/o device we just invented" (computers).