Word of the Day: June 19, 2009 - eat

eat (eet) - verb

Eat means "to chew and swallow food."

First used in the written form before the year 900. Eat is a very ancient and basic verb. It goes back to Indo-European ed- (eat), the distant ancestor of the English word tooth, which produced the basic word for "eat" in most European languages, apart from French, Italian, Rumanian, and the Celtic languages. The Greek word edein, the Latin word edere, the Latin comedere ("to eat up") and the Russian word jest. Its Germanic descendant was etan (ultimate source of the English etch), which produced the German essen, Dutch eten, Swedish ota, and English eat.

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