h₁ed-

The root *h₁ed- ("to eat") is one of the most securely reconstructed PIE verbal roots, with cognates preserved across all major branches and minimal semantic drift. The stability of the word for eating — a daily, universal activity — accounts for its resistance to lexical replacement. Latin edere ("to eat") continues the root directly, though it was largely replaced in everyday speech by mandūcāre (whence French manger, Spanish comer, Italian mangiare). The Latin form survives in the learned vocabulary: edible (edibilis), comestible (through French, from Latin comedere), and obese (obēsus, "having eaten up," i.e., fattened). Greek édō (ἔδω, "I eat") is archaic in classical Greek, where esthíō (ἐσθίω) supplanted it in common usage. The learned derivative is odont- (ὀδούς, "tooth," from *h₁d-ónt-, literally "the eating one"), giving orthodontist, periodontal, and odontology. Sanskrit átti ("eats") shows the regular Indo-Iranian development with gemination of the dental. The derivative anna ("food, rice") is culturally central in Indian traditions. In Germanic, Old English etan (Modern English eat), Old High German ezzan (Modern German essen), Old Norse eta, and Gothic itan continue the root with full regularity. The phonological development *h₁ed- > *et- > eat is transparent. Lithuanian ė́sti ("to eat," used of animals) and Old Church Slavonic jasti ("to eat") continue the Balto-Slavic reflexes. Hittite et-/ad- provides the earliest written attestation. The derivative *h₁d-ónt- ("tooth," literally "the eating thing") is itself a significant reconstruction, continued in Latin dēns (genitive dentis), Greek odoús (genitive odóntos), and Sanskrit dánt-. English tooth (from Proto-Germanic *tanþs, with Grimm's Law) and German Zahn continue the same derivative. The relationship between "eat" and "tooth" illustrates the derivational morphology of PIE.