Etymology: Common Germanic: Old English æt = Old Frisian êt , Old Saxon ât , Old High German âz , Old Norse át < Old Germanic *æ̂to-m , < ablaut-stem of *etan to eat v. In later use perhaps the verb stem used substantively.

Etymology: Common Germanic and Old English etan strong verb (3rd singular present ytt, ieteþ, past tense 1st, 3rd singular ǽt, æt, plural ǽton, past participle eten) = Old Frisian ita, eta, Old Saxon etan (Middle Dutch, Dutch eten), Old High German ezan, ezzan (Middle High German ezzen, modern German essen), Old Norse eta (Swedish äta, Danish äde), Gothic itan < Old Germanic etan = Latin edĕre, Greek ἔδειν, Irish, Gaelic ith, Lithuanian ed-, Sanskrit ad-. The accentuation of Old English manuscripts shows that this verb differed, as in Gothic and Old Norse, from other verbs of the same conjugation in having a long vowel in the past tense singular ǽt, whence the modern eat/iːt/; but a form æt, with short vowel, must also have existed, as is proved by the Middle English form at, modern ate. The pronunciation /ɛt/ is commonly associated with the written form ate, but perhaps belongs rather to eat, with shortened vowel after analogy of weak verbs read, lead, etc.; compare dialect /bɛt/ past tense of beat.