teat
/tiːt/ noun, proper noun
Forms teats
- noun (anatomy) The projection of a mammary gland from which, on female therian mammals, milk is secreted.
- noun Something resembling a teat, such as a small protuberance or nozzle.
- noun An artificial nipple used for bottle-feeding infants.
- proper noun A surname from German.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English tete, from Old French tete (“teat”) (compare French tette), from Frankish *tittā, *tittō, from Proto-Germanic *tittaz (“teat; nipple; breast”), ultimately of expressive origin. Compare Old High German zizza ("teat"; modern German Zitze), whence also Italian zizza (“teat”).
It heavily displaced Old English titt, a cognate of the same origin, which survives as tit, but in more vulgar use. Compare Dutch tiet and German Zitze (“teat”).
Probably an Americanized spelling of German Thiet, itself a variant of Thiede.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The protuberance through which milk is drawn from the udder or breast of a mammal; a nipple; a pap; a mammilla; a dug; a tit.
- noun A small protuberance or nozzle resembling the teat of an animal.
Etymology [OE. tete, titte, AS. tit, titt; akin to LG. & OD. titte, D. tet, G. zitze: cf. F. tette, probably of Teutonic origin.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “teat”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details