Teat
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The projection of a mammary gland from which, on female therian mammals, milk is secreted.
"Milk formed their chief diet, and this they were supposed to imbibe from the witch herself, from a third "teat" which had been made beneath the arm by a nip from the Devil's pincers."
- 2 the small projection of a mammary gland wordnet
- 3 Something resembling a teat, such as a small protuberance or nozzle.
- 4 An artificial nipple used for bottle-feeding infants.
- 1 A surname from German.
Example
More examples"The old lady had found Rachel trying to suckle milk from her dead mother’s cold, empty teat."
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.
Related phrases
More for "teat"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.