eat
To consume food by putting it in the mouth, chewing, and swallowing.
Etymology
From Old English etan, from Proto-Germanic *etaną, from PIE *h₁ed- "to eat, to consume." One of the most stable basic vocabulary items across Indo-European languages. This root gives us "edible" and "comestible" (via Latin edere), "anorexia" (Greek an- + orexis, though from a different root), and "etch" (originally to cause acid to "eat" into metal).
The Journey: *h₁ed- → eat
*h₁ed-
*etaną
etan
eten
eat
Cognates Across Languages
These words in other languages descend from the same PIE root *h₁ed-. They are not borrowings but independent inheritances from a common ancestor.
| Language | Word |
|---|---|
| Greek | édō |
| Latin | edere, ēsse |
| Hittite | ed- |
| Armenian | utem |
| Sanskrit | ádmi |
| Lithuanian | ė́sti |
| Old Church Slavonic | jasti |
Did You Know?
The word "etch" comes from Dutch etsen, from German ätzen "to cause to eat" — because acid "eats" into the metal plate. "Obese" comes from Latin ob- "over" + edere "to eat" — literally "one who has over-eaten."
This word descends from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₁ed-. See the full root page for descendant trees, sound law references, and scholarly discussion.