pizza

Meaning

1. A baked Italian dish of a thinly rolled bread crust typically topped before baking with tomato sauce, cheese, and other ingredients such as meat or vegetables.
2. A single instance of this dish.

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈpiːt.sə/

Etymology

1931, borrowed from Neapolitan pizza (1590), the Neapolitan dialectal form of Byzantine Greek πίτα (píta, “cake, pie”).
The Greek word is first attested in 1107 and is itself of uncertain origin.
The northern Italian dialectal form was pinza, the southern (Apulian and Calabrian) form was pitta.
This suggests a derivation from Latin pīnctus (pictus (“painted, smeared”)) or pīnsum, pīnsitum, pistum (“pounded”), but the northern forms appear to be contaminated with pinzare (“to staple”).
There are alternative suggestions involving Greek etymologies (πηκτή (pēktḗ), πηκτός (pēktós, “compacted, congealed”); πήτεα (pḗtea, “bran”); Ancient Greek πιττάκιον (pittákion, “patch; tablet; ticket”)), more remote possibilities involve comparison with Lombardic pizzo, pizza (“bite, morsel, lump, dumpling”); Albanian petë (“layer”), Romanian pată (“blotch, stain, macula”); Albanian pite (“gruel”);
From Aramaic פִיתָּא (pītā, “piece of bread”), Hebrew פַּת (paṯ, “bread”). Doublet of pide and pita.