Other forms: peats
Peat is dark partly rotted plant matter dug from bogs. Cut peat, a peat bog, burn peat.
It forms where waterlogged ground stops plants decaying, at about a millimetre a year, so a metre of peat is a thousand years old. Peat bogs store more carbon than all the world's forests, which is why draining and burning them matters so much. It was fuel across Ireland and Scotland for centuries, and peat smoke is what gives some whiskies their flavour.
1nounpeatDark partly rotted plant matter dug from bogs.
“Peat forms at about a millimetre a year.”
peat is an organic deposit.
Medieval Latin peta is of unknown origin, possibly from a Celtic word meaning a piece or portion. The word is first recorded in the north of England.
cel-bry-pro
*peθ — portion, segment, piece
enm-nor
pete
English, today
peat
enm-nor pete (recorded in Latin text as peta), of unknown origin; perhaps from a cel - language such as an unattested xpi - or cel-bry - source, in turn possibly from cel-bry-pro peθ (“portion, segment, piece”); if so, it would be a a doublet of piece.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA