Other forms: pizzas
A pizza is a flat round Italian dish with cheese and tomato baked on top. Order a pizza, a slice of pizza, wood-fired pizza.
Neapolitan pizza has protected status, with rules about the flour, the shape and a bake of about ninety seconds in a very hot oven. It travelled to America with Italian emigrants and came back transformed. The Margherita is said to have been named for a queen in 1889, which is a good story with thin evidence. Note pizzeria; and that pizza is now among the most widely eaten dishes there is.
1nounpizzaA flat round baked Italian dish with toppings.
“Let's order a pizza and watch a film tonight.”
pizza is a dish.
Neapolitan pizza is recorded from 1590 and may come from a Medieval Greek word pita, a cake or pie. The Greek word's own origin is uncertain.
Neapolitan
pizza
English, today
pizza
Built from
Borrowed from Neapolitan pizza. 1931, Neapolitan pizza (1590), the dialectal form of Medieval Greek πίτα (“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 pinso, pinso, pistum (“pounded”), but the northern forms appear to be contaminated with pinzare (“to staple”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA