creta

See also: Creta and cretă

Catalan

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin creta. Doublet of greda.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (Central) [ˈkɾɛ.tə]
• IPA^(key): (Balearic) [ˈkɾə.tə]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [ˈkɾe.ta]

Noun

creta f (plural cretes)

1. chalk (a soft, white, powdery limestone)

See also

• guix (“piece of chalk”)

Further reading

• “creta” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “creta”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025
• “creta” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “creta” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Galician

Etymology

From Latin creta.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɾeta/ [ˈkɾe.t̪ɐ]
• Rhymes: -eta
• Hyphenation: cre‧ta

Noun

creta f (plural cretas)

1. chalk

Further reading

• “creta”, in Dicionario da Real Academia Galega (in Galician), A Coruña: Royal Galician Academy, 2012–2025

Italian

Etymology

From Latin creta.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkre.ta/, /ˈkrɛ.ta/
• Rhymes: -eta, -ɛta
• Hyphenation: cré‧ta, crè‧ta

Noun

creta f (plural crete)

1. chalk
2. clay

Anagrams

• -crate, carte, certa, cetra, tacer, trace

Ladin

Alternative forms

• crëta

Noun

creta f (plural cretes)

1. credit (financial)
2. confidence

Latin

Etymology 1

Unknown; perhaps:

• From Crēta, thus “Cretan earth”.
• From (terra) crēta (“sifted (earth)”), substantivized from the feminine gender of crētus. De Vaan considers this phonetically sound but semantically weak (clay is not a sifted type of dirt).
• From an archaic Proto-Indo-European noun *tkʷreh₁-it- (compare Old Irish crē, Welsh pridd, Tocharian A tukri and Tocharian B kwriye, all meaning “clay”) plus the thematic feminine ending *-eh₂, but the root would be otherwise unknown.
• An early borrowing from Celtic, or from the same substrate source as the Celtic words; more at Proto-Celtic *kʷrīyess. This theory is preferred by de Vaan.

Noun

crēta f (genitive crētae); first declension

1. chalk
2. clay, clayey soil

Declension

First-declension noun.

	singular	plural
nominative	crēta	crētae
genitive	crētae	crētārum
dative	crētae	crētīs
accusative	crētam	crētās
ablative	crētā	crētīs
vocative	crēta	crētae

Derived terms

• crētātus
• crētōsus
• crētula

Descendants

• Italian: creta
• Vulgar Latin: *crēda
  • Franco-Provençal: creia, greia
  • Gallo-Italic
    • Lombard: creia
    • Piedmontese: creja
  • Occitano-Romance
    • Catalan: greda
    • Occitan: greda
  • Oïl
    • French: craie
      • → Portuguese: cré
      • ⇒ French: crayon (see there for further descendants)
    • Norman: craie
  • Venetan: crèa
    • → Cimbrian: khrèa
  • West Iberian
    • Portuguese: greda
    • Spanish: greda
• → Catalan: creta
• →⇒ English: creta preparata
• → Galician: creta
• → Proto-West Germanic: *krīdā, *krītā
• → Hungarian: kréta
• → Portuguese: creta
• → Romanian: cretă
• → Spanish: creta

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Participle

crēta

1. inflection of crētus:
   1. nominative/vocative feminine singular
   2. nominative/accusative/vocative neuter plural

Participle

crētā

1. ablative feminine singular of crētus

References

• “creta”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “creta”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• creta in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “creta”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “creta”, in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin crēta. Compare greda.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɾeta/ [ˈkɾe.t̪a]
• Rhymes: -eta
• Syllabification: cre‧ta

Noun

creta f (uncountable)

1. (geology) chalk (rock)

   Synonym: caliza de Creta

2. (vulgar, Dominican Republic) the labia minora; the vaginal lips

Further reading

• “creta”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10