To be and to eat

Some languages must have been up to something when they created similar words for to eat and to be. German essen (to eat) goes isst (old spelling: ißt) in third person singular, which is a homophone with ist (to be), also third person singular. Russian есть (is) , pronounced est', has the same form as the verb to eat, есть. In Slovak, je is the third person singular both of the verb jesť (to eat) and byť (to be). Jest (is) in Polish is similar to Czech jíst (to eat). Latin es means both (thou) eatest and (thou) art, the difference being that thou art has a short e and thou eatest a long e.

All this talk reminds me of that old adage: edo ut vivam, non vivo ut edam ("I eat to live, I don't live to eat").