Other forms: pets
A pet is an animal kept at home for company. Keep a pet, a family pet, pet insurance.
The word also means a favourite, as in teacher's pet, and to pet an animal is to stroke it. The relationship is very old: a dog has been a pet for tens of thousands of years, and cats attached themselves to the first grain stores.
1nounpetAn animal kept at home for company.
“We aren't allowed any pets in our flat, not even a goldfish.”
pet is an animal.
Originally Scots and northern dialect, of uncertain origin, first meaning a hand-reared lamb or a favourite child.
mga
petta
Scottish Gaelic
peata — pet, tamed animal, spoiled child
Scots
pet — an animal that has been tamed and is kept as a pet; a darling or favourite; a petted or spoiled child
English, today
pet
Built from
Originally northern dialectal, from Scots pet (“an animal that has been tamed and is kept as a pet; a darling or favourite; a petted or spoiled child”), probably from Scottish Gaelic peata (“pet, tamed animal, spoiled child”), from mga petta, peta (“pet, lap-dog”), of unknown origin, possibly from a pre-Indo-European qfa-sub. Compare also peat (“pet, darling, woman”), which is likely not related. The verb is derived from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA