Everyday LifeGreek → English
Diet
/ˈdaɪət/noun
The food a person habitually eats, or a restricted eating plan.
The Greek roots
δίαιτα
díaita
way of living, regimen
Literally: “way of living”
Follow a root:δίαιτα2 words
The story of the word
For Hippocratic doctors δίαιτα covered a patient's whole life: food, drink, exercise, sleep, sex, climate, the house they lived in. Prescribing a diet meant prescribing a routine, and the narrowing to what goes in the mouth took centuries. The slimming sense is nineteenth-century. The parliamentary Diet, as at Worms in 1521, is a different word, from Medieval Latin dieta, a day's assembly.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
dietarydieteticsdietitian
In a sentence
Their diet is mostly beans, bread and whatever the garden gives.