eat

Pronunciation

• IPA: /iːt/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English eten, inherited from Old English etan (“to consume food; devour”), past tense ǣt,^[2][3] from Proto-Germanic *etaną.^[2][4] Its cognates include Old Frisian eta, Old Saxon etan, Dutch eten, German essen and Old Norse eta,^[3][5][6] and Gothic has itan.^[2][4] Watkins traces it to Proto-Indo-European *ed- (“to eat”),^[2][7] the root also of Latin edere (“to eat”), Greek ἔδω (édō) and Sanskrit ádmi “I eat”.^[4][6][8] Word Origins notes that the same root gives edible and comestible.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

To consume food: Old English etan, about 725,^[3] or about 825 in the OED.^[10]

Semantic evolution

“To submit to, swallow” an insult is from 1382.^[10] The transferred sense “to corrode, wear away, consume” is from the 1550s.^[2][11] Eat one's words is from the 1570s and eat one's heart out from the 1590s.^[2] “To preoccupy, worry”, as in what's eating you?, is by 1893.^[2] Eat out, “to dine away from home”, is from 1930, and the eat-in kitchen from 1955.^[2] The noun eats, “food”, continues Old English ǣt (“food”) and is now colloquial.^[5][12]

Timeline

• c. 725 – Old English etan.^[3]
• 1382 – to swallow an insult.^[10]
• 1550s – to corrode.^[2]
• 1570s – eat one's words.^[2]
• 1590s – eat one's heart out.^[2]
• 1893 – to worry.^[2]
• 1930 – eat out.^[2]

Modern meaning

Verb

1. To take food into the body by the mouth and swallow it; to have a meal.
2. To include habitually in one's diet.
3. To consume or destroy as if by eating; to erode or corrode.
4. To absorb a cost or loss.
5. To worry or annoy persistently.

Noun

1. eats (informal) Food.

Word family

• eater

Related words

• fret
• ort
• edible
• comestible
• etch

Usage notes

The American Heritage Dictionary compares eat with consume, devour and ingest.^[13] The SOED notes the past tense ate pronounced /et/ as well as /eɪt/,^[5] and the CEPD gives /et/ as the main British form.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
8. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
12. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin