Eats

How to spell eats

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce eats

What does eats mean?

1. verbConsumes food; the third-person singular present form of 'eat'.
2. nounFood or meals, used informally.

Eats in a sentence

• verb

  She eats lunch at her desk most days.

• noun

  The new café near the station serves cheap eats.

• verb

  The toddler eats very little in the morning.

• noun

  They packed the cooler with sandwiches and other eats for the road.

Where does eats come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a form of the verb 'eat', which descends directly from the Old English word 'etan', meaning to consume food, a thoroughly native Germanic verb. It shares ancestry with the Old Frisian 'eta', the Dutch 'eten', and the German 'essen', all going back to a Proto-Germanic root 'etan' and ultimately to a Proto-Indo-European root 'ed-' meaning to eat or to bite. That same ancient root surfaces in the Latin 'edere' (to eat), which is why words like 'edible' feel distantly related. The '-s' ending here is the ordinary English inflection, marking either the third-person singular of the verb ('she eats') or, more informally, a plural noun for food and meals. Because both the root and the suffix are so plain, the spelling has stayed simple and unchanged for centuries.

How the word is built

• eat (Old English root meaning to consume food)
• -s (third-person singular present, or noun plural)