h₁ed-₂
“to eat, consume, bite”Source of Latin edere, English eat, edible, comestible, obese
Root for eating, yielding Latin edere and English eat, edible, comestible, obese, etch.
Discussion
The PIE root *h₁ed- (to eat, to consume, to devour) is one of the most conservatively inherited verbs in the family — the word for the most basic biological necessity, preserved across every branch with the same meaning for over five thousand years.
Latin edere (to eat) continues the root directly and gave English: edible (fit to be eaten), comestible (from comedere, "to eat up"), and obese (ob-ēsus, "having eaten excessively"). The related Latin noun ēsca (food, bait) preserves the nominal derivative.
Greek édein (ἔδειν, "to eat") and the related noun édesma (food) preserve the Hellenic reflex.
English eat (OE etan, from PGmc *etaną) continues the root natively with minimal change. German essen, Dutch eten, and Old Norse eta confirm the pan-Germanic distribution. The word etch (from Dutch etsen, from German ätzen, "to cause to eat" — acid eating into metal) shows the causative: to etch is to make acid eat a surface.
Sanskrit átti ("he eats") preserves the Indo-Iranian reflex. Lithuanian ė́sti and Old Church Slavonic jasti confirm the Balto-Slavic forms.
The root's connection to *dent- (tooth — from *h₁d-ent-, "the eating one") reveals the PIE naming logic: the tooth is defined by its function, and the function is named by the root.