[Ads-l] Pita (?!)

[Ben Zimmer]

This is giving the author's etymology for Irish _coth_ and suggesting
cognates in other Indo-European languages, including Sanskrit: "Skr. _pita_
'bread'.: The quotation marks around "bread" indicate it's a gloss of the
Sanskrit term.

I'm assuming the author was referring to Sansrkit _pitu_ 'food', which is
evidently cognate with Old Irish _ith_ 'grain'.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%81


On Sat, Jul 25, 2026 at 3:16 PM victor steinbok <
000025123e35b025-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> Another strange find, this time in Cormac's Glossary, published in
> Calcutta, 1868.
>
> I can't quite make out the entire context, as some lines are manually
> crossed out, but under "Coth" there's a reference to "pita 'bread'" [sic].
> The more general context is food, so the reference seems to be real. The
> strangest thing is that the scary quotes are on "bread", not on "pita".
>
> OED has the earliest "pita" in 1936, so this is much further back.
>
>
> https://books.google.com/books?id=0tagCr8Plw8C&pg=PA38&dq=%22pita+bread%22+before:1937&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&ovdme=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjka6Nwe6VAxXfF2IAHfQHFN0Q6AF6BAgNEAM#v=onepage&q=%22pita%20bread%22%20before%3A1937&f=false
>
> VS-)
>
>

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