# creta
## Catalan
### Etymology

Borrowed from Latin creta. Doublet of greda.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: (Central) [ˈkɾɛ.tə]
* IPA: (Balearic) [ˈkɾə.tə]
* IPA: (Valencia) [ˈkɾe.ta]

### Noun

creta f (plural cretes)
* 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: /ˈkɾeta/ [ˈkɾe.t̪ɐ]
* Rhymes: -eta
* Hyphenation: cre‧ta

### Noun

creta f (plural cretas)
* 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: /ˈkre.ta/, /ˈkrɛ.ta/
* Rhymes: -eta, -ɛta
* Hyphenation: cré‧ta, crè‧ta

### Noun

creta f (plural crete)
* chalk
* clay

### References

* ↑ creta in Luciano Canepari, Dizionario di Pronuncia Italiana (DiPI)

### Anagrams

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

## Ladin
### Alternative forms

* crëta

### Noun

creta f (plural cretes)
* credit (financial)
* 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
* chalk
* clay, clayey soil

##### Declension

First-declension noun.

##### 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

#### References

* 1 2 De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “crēta”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 144
* ↑ Mallory, J. P. with Adams, D. Q. (2006) The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (Oxford Linguistics), New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 121: “*tkʷreh₁yot- ‘clay’”
* ↑ Adams, Douglas Q. (2013) “$^×$kwraiññe*”, in A Dictionary of Tocharian B: Revised and Greatly Enlarged (Leiden Studies in Indo-European; 10), Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, →ISBN, pages 259–260

### Etymology 2

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

#### Participle

crēta
* inflection of crētus:
** nominative/vocative feminine singular
** nominative/accusative/vocative neuter plural

#### Participle

crētā
* 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: /ˈkɾeta/ [ˈkɾe.t̪a]
* Rhymes: -eta
* Syllabification: cre‧ta

### Noun

creta f (uncountable)
* (geology) chalk (rock)
    Synonym: caliza de Creta
* (vulgar, Dominican Republic) the labia minora; the vaginal lips
    Synonym: labias menores

### 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