# ate

Pronunciation: say "AYT" /eɪt/

## Verb

1. Past tense of eat. — simple past of eat
   - Simple: Past tense of eat. Use it for the past.
   - _The hikers ate their packed lunch beside the river._
   - _He ate slowly, savoring every bite of the meal._
2. Past participle of eat. Nonstandard; the standard past participle is eaten. *(nonstandard)* — past participle of eat
   - Simple: Past participle of eat. Some people say this after 'have' or 'had,' but the usual form is 'eaten.'
   - _She insisted she had ate her fill and pushed the plate away._
   - _We realized the kids had ate the last of the bread for breakfast._

## Noun

Pronunciation: say "AH-tay" /ˈʔɐ.te/

3. A person's elder sister. *(Philippines)*
   - Simple: A person's older sister.
   - _Whenever I had trouble at school, my ate was the first person I told._
   - _Ate handled the family budget once their mother fell ill._
4. A respectful title or form of address used for an older woman. *(Philippines)*
   - Simple: A polite title used when speaking to or about an older woman.
   - _"Ate, how much for a kilo of these mangoes?" I asked the woman running the fruit stand._
   - _The younger vendors greeted the senior stallholder as ate every morning._

## Origin

**Meanings 1–2** — Probably a remodeling of eat by analogy with past forms such as spake and gave. The older pronunciation that rhymes with "bet" continues Middle English et, from Old English ǣt, going back through Proto-West Germanic *āt to Proto-Germanic *ēt.
**Meanings 3–4** — Hokkien 阿姊 (á-ché, "eldest sister") is the starting point. Tagalog took it as ate, a word for an "elder sister," and English borrowed the Tagalog word.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/ate (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).