pet

The root pet comes from Latin petere, a verb with a vivid physical core: to rush at, fly toward, aim for, attack. A Roman soldier would petere the enemy line; a hawk would petere its prey. From this image of forceful, directed motion toward a target, the verb softened into a more general sense: to seek, to aim at, to strive for. Almost the entire English family grows out of that single picture of moving toward something you want.

Watch how prefixes steer the direction of the seeking:

- com- (together) + petere → compete: literally 'to seek together' — several people striving for the same prize at once. Two runners petere the same finish line, and the Latin idea of 'seeking alongside one another' became our notion of rivalry. From the same stem come competition, competitor, competitive.
- re- (again) + petere → repeat: to seek again, to go after the same thing once more — hence to do or say it over. Repetition and repetitive keep the idea of going back for more.
- ad- (toward) + petere → appetite: a seeking toward something, especially food. Your appetite is your body rushing toward a meal. An appetizer is what wakes that seeking up.
- in- (in, onto) + petere → impetus: the original force that hurls something forward — a push, a momentum. The adjective impetuous describes a person who rushes ahead like that force, acting before thinking.
- per- (through, all the way) + petere → perpetual: seeking on and on through all time, never stopping — hence everlasting. Perpetuate means to keep that endless motion going.
- petition is the most direct survival of the 'seek/ask' sense: a formal seeking, a request laid before authority. A petitioner is the one doing the asking.

Two branches drift further from the plain meaning. With competent / competence, the chain runs com- + petere = 'to seek together,' then 'to come together, to be suitable, to be adequate' — so to be competent is for your abilities to meet the demands of a task. The original 'striving' faded into 'being equal to the job.' And in physics, centripetal (centrum 'center' + petere) names a force forever seeking the center, pulling a spinning object inward.

The spelling wobbles a little. Old French handed English the variant petit- (as in petition, petulant) and the clipped pit- (as in propitiate). And not every pet/pit word belongs here — pity and pitiful come from Latin pietas (piety, compassion), a completely different root that only happens to look similar.

The pattern to hold onto: pet is always a movement toward a target. The prefix tells you the angle — toward food (appetite), toward the same prize (compete), toward it again (repeat), through all time (perpetual), into forward motion (impetus).