pizza
n. C / Un. a popular Italian food made of a flat, round piece of dough. It is topped with tomato sauce, cheese, and often meat or vegetables before being baked in an oven.
n. a dish of Italian origin consisting of a flat, round base of leavened wheat-based dough topped with tomatoes, cheese, and various other ingredients. Baked at high temperatures, traditionally in a wood-fired oven.
We usually order a large cheese pizza on Friday nights.
The local restaurant serves authentic thin-crust pizza topped with fresh basil and buffalo mozzarella.
While the traditional Neapolitan pizza is protected by specific culinary regulations, modern variations have expanded to include diverse crust styles and unconventional toppings ranging from pineapple to truffle oil.
1931, borrowed from Neapolitan pizza (1590), the Neapolitan dialectal form of Byzantine Greek πίτα (píta, “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 pīnsum, pīnsitum, pistum (“pounded”), but the northern forms appear to be contaminated with pinzare (“to staple”). There are alternative suggestions involving Greek etymologies (πηκτή (pēktḗ), πηκτός (pēktós, “compacted, congealed”); πήτεα (pḗtea, “bran”); Ancient Greek πιττάκιον (pittákion, “patch; tablet; ticket”)), more remote possibilities involve comparison with Lombardic pizzo, pizza (“bite, morsel, lump, dumpling”); Albanian petë (“layer”), Romanian pată (“blotch, stain, macula”); Albanian pite (“gruel”); From Aramaic פִיתָּא (pītā, “piece of bread”), Hebrew פַּת (paṯ, “bread”). Doublet of pide and pita.
Uncountable when referring to the food in general; countable when referring to a specific whole item or a variety.