Stacks of pita for sale at a Jerusalem market, 2010
5 May 2025
Pita is a type of flat, hollow, unleavened bread, often filled with meat or other ingredients, that is associated with Middle Eastern or Balkan cuisine. Its use in English was relatively uncommon before the 1980s, but examples can be found from the 1930s.
It was borrowed into English from several languages, each case depending on the cuisine being described: Hebrew פיתה (pittah), Greek πίτα or πίττα (pita, pitta), and Serbo-Croation pita. The Greek word can be dated to the early twelfth century CE, but it does not seem to have an ancient Greek root. Pita has cognates in a variety of languages, but the connections between these cognates cannot be clearly established. Ultimate origins in Aramaic, Illyrian, and Proto-Germanic have been suggested, but these are speculative.
The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Palestine Post of 30 March 1936. It is found in an article about prisoners who built a radio tower outside of Jerusalem during British occupation of the territory:
Bread was Khalil’s greatest desire and dancing was his life. His bulging muscles produced a ravenous appetite which could never be satisfied. For a chunk of “pitah,” usually produced by Abraham, the Communist, Khalil would spend the lunch hour dancing. At this moments he was transformed from a hulking giant into a graceful dancer, whose splayed feet, writhing legs, sinuous hips, snaky arms, swaying body and joie de vivre expressed in six foot four the spirit of Oriental dancing.
Sources:
Lurie, J. Z. “Yussef, Khalil and Abraham.” Palestine Post (Jerusalem), 30 March 1936, 28/3–4. National Library of Israel.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2006, s.v. pitta | pita, n.2.
Image credit: Gilabrand, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PileofpitaS.jpg Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
