In medieval Latin the verb pistorare (not attested in Classical Latin) has a primary sense of ‘to pound or grind’, with transferred secondary senses of ‘to bake, to cook by baking’ and ‘to knead’ (cf. DMLBS 2294c). The equivalent verb in Anglo-Norman (and Continental French) is attested predominantly with the sense of ‘to knead’, although the context is not always clear as to which part of the process of working with cereals/dough (grinding – kneading – baking) the verb refers.

Both formally and semantically, the verb is very similar with paster and pester¹, and a certain level of merging of the three must have existed already in medieval times. However, their distinct etymologies together with a different emphasis on what is the main sense and the evidence of three different word-families in the derivational nouns validate the necessity of three separate articles.