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In politics, a diet is a formal deliberative assembly. The term is derived from Medieval Latin dietas, and ultimately comes from the Latin dies, "day". The word came to be used in this sense because assemblies met on a daily basis which is reflected in the German language use of Tagung (Meeting) and -tag (day, as in Montag, or parliament, as in Bundestag)^{[citation needed]}.

In this sense, it commonly refers to the Reichstag assemblies of the Holy Roman Empire; see Reichstag (institution), Diet of Augsburg, Diet of Nuremberg, Diet of Regensburg, Diet of Speyer and Diet of Worms.

Since the Second Peace of Thorn of 1466, a German language^{[citation needed]} Prussian diet Landtag was held in the lands of Royal Prussia, an province of Poland in personal union with the King of Poland.

The assemblies of the Hungarian nobility, customarily called together every three years in Pozsony, were also called "Diéta" in the Habsburg Empire before the 1848 revolution.

The Riksdag of the Estates was the diet of the four estates of Sweden, from the 15th century until 1866. The Diet of Finland was the successor to the Riksdag of the Estates in the Grand Duchy of Finland, from 1809 to 1906.

The Swiss Diet was known as Tagsatzung.

In other countries the name of the comparable assembly came from the generality of the States:

• Belgium and the Netherlands: Staten Generaal
• France: États Généraux
• Spain: Generalitat de Catalunya, Generalitat Valenciana, Cortes Generales

• The modern German parliament, called the Bundestag, literally means "Federal Diet"; the derivation is that "tag" in German means "assembly," indicating the Latin-derived meaning. The term is rarely if ever translated into English in English-language texts, even on first reference.
• The name of the Swedish parliament is the Riksdag, which being cognate to German Reichstag literally means "Assembly of the Realm" or "Assembly of the Empire."
• The Japanese Parliament (the Kokkai) is conventionally called the Diet in English, indicating the heavy Prussian influence on the Meiji Constitution, Japan's first modern written constitution.

• The States
• Landtag
• Federal Assembly