late 14c., repaste, "a meal, a feast; food, nourishment, act of taking food," from Old French repast (Modern French repas) "a meal, food," from Late Latin repastus "meal" (also source of Spanish repasto), noun use of past participle of repascere "to feed again," from re- "repeatedly" (see re-) + Latin pascere "to graze" (from PIE root *pa- "to feed"). The verb, "refresh oneself with food" (intransitive), is from late 15c.
c. 1300, dinen, "eat the chief meal of the day, take dinner;" also in a general sense "to eat," from Old French disner "to dine, eat, have a meal" (Modern French dîner), originally "take the first meal of the day," from stem of Gallo-Roman *desjunare "to break one's fast," from Vulgar Latin *disjejunare, from dis- "undo, do the opposite of" (see dis-) + Late Latin jejunare "to fast," from Latin iejunus "fasting, hungry, not partaking of food" (see jejune).
Transitive sense of "give a dinner to" is from late 14c. To dine out "take dinner away from home" is by 1758.
"peas collectively," Old English; see pea, of which this is the original form. Pease-porridge "a porridge made of pease meal" is from 1530s.
Old English polente, "a kind of barley meal," from Latin pollenta, polenta, literally "peeled barley," related to pollen "powder, fine flour" (see pollen), but the ultimate origin is uncertain. English later reborrowed it 19c. from Italian polenta (from the Latin word) for "porridge made of corn (maize)," a principal food in northern Italy, originally made from chestnut meal.
meal from the large, hard kernels of wheat left after the fine flour has been sifted, 1797, alteration of Italian semolino "grits; paste for soups," diminutive of semola "bran," from Latin simila "the finest flour," probably from the same Semitic source as Greek semidalis "the finest flour" (compare Assyrian samidu, Syrian semida "fine meal").
