"Σήμερα έφαγα ένα αυγό."
Translation:Today I ate an egg.
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So, the past of the verb "τρώω" is "έφαγα"... Wow, what a change! It totally looks like a new verb!
What's more interesting is that the past tense sounds more intuitive. Think about Phagocytosis (if you remember you biology classes), as the process that happens when a cell engulfs and eats another microorganism. I'd be curious to know the etymology of τρώω.
Τρώω comes from the ancient verb "τρώγω" (which is also a rare form of the verb in Modern Greek). The φαγ- stem comes from another ancient verb, εσθίω (that formed past simple as έ-φαγ-ον/ it was irregular, too) which merged with τρώ(γ)ω (which was regular back then) and replaced the "aorist" tenses (that is, the tenses that show an one-time action). So the verb τρώω has come to use the stem τρω(γ)- for continuous tenses and the stem φα(γ)- for the "aorist" tenses. Φαγοκυττάρωση (eat+cell)/Φαγοκύτωση (eat+cavity) can be understood by a Greek who looks closely at the word without many problems, especially the first one, as the stems are obvious.
