teat

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English tete, also tet,^[2] borrowed from Old French tete, also tette,^[3][2][4] which survives as tette.^[4][5][6] Most dictionaries trace the Old French word to Germanic,^[7][2][8][9] some with a "probably",^[10][5][6] and Barnhart and Etymonline name Proto-Germanic *titta,^[3][4][1] the source of Old English titt (“teat, nipple, breast”),^[4][3][11] Middle Low German titte, Middle High German zitze, German Zitze and Dutch tit.^[3][11] Spanish teta and Italian tetta are from the same source.^[4][12] The revised OED is more cautious: it takes the English word as probably an alteration of tit after the Anglo-Norman and French forms, and the Romance word as perhaps borrowed from the Germanic base of tit, or perhaps of similar imitative origin.^[13] The Germanic words themselves are explained as imitative or as nursery words,^[12][14][13] Holthausen calling the Old English one a babbling word,^[11] and Weekley comparing Latin mamma (“breast”).^[14] Barnhart compares Ancient Greek τίτθη (títthē, “nurse, breast”),^[3] and Partridge takes both back to Proto-Indo-European *dhei- (“to suck”),^[15] whereas Skeat kept the Greek word apart.^[16]

Earliest recorded meaning

The nipple of a woman's breast: about 1200, in a translation of the Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarium in the OED,^[13] and perhaps already late Old English in Etymonline,^[4] and the 12th century in Merriam-Webster.^[2] Barnhart's first record is the plural teten, about 1250, in Genesis and Exodus.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The new form replaced the older tit in the standard language,^[6][5][10] leaving that word to dialect and later to vulgar use.^[14][1] At first teat could also mean the whole breast or udder,^[5] and by the mid-14th century it was applied to the nipples of men too.^[4] From about 1350 the teat also stood for suckling and so for infancy.^[13] Before 1382 it was already used figuratively for a source of nourishment,^[13][5] as in Donne's "God's mercies..are teats of his graces".^[5] Chaucer and Gower each use the word once.^[17] From about 1425 it also named anything shaped like a nipple, first in a translation of Guy de Chauliac's surgery.^[13] Johnson (1755) gave it first as the dug of a beast and said that it had anciently meant a woman's breast.^[18] The artificial teat of a feeding bottle is recorded from 1825,^[13] and Merriam-Webster marks this use of the word as British.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – the nipple of a woman's breast.^[13][4] Barnhart's first record is about 1250.^[3]
• c. 1350 – the teat, suckling or infancy.^[13]
• before 1382 – figurative, a source of nourishment.^[13]
• c. 1425 – something shaped like a nipple.^[13]
• 1825 – an artificial teat, as on a feeding bottle.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. The nipple of a mammary gland; in cows and other animals, one of the projections from the udder through which milk is drawn.^[9][2][13]
2. (British) A soft rubber or silicone mouthpiece on a baby's feeding bottle.^[9][2][13]
3. Anything shaped like a nipple; a small conical projection.^[9][13]
4. In engineering, a small projecting part, such as the guide on a countersink or a nib on a leaf spring.^[2]

Word family

• teated

Related words

• tit
• titty

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
12. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
16. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
17. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
18. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.