# mate

Pronunciation: say "MAYT" US/UK /meɪt/, AUS /mæɪt/

## Noun

1. A companion, colleague, or partner; someone with whom a place, task, or experience is shared, as on a ship or in a classroom.
   - Simple: A person who shares something with you, like a class, a job, or a ship.
   - _Her cabin mate on the cruise turned out to be a marine biologist._
   - _He still exchanges letters with his old army mates._
3. Someone's spouse or romantic or sexual partner, or the person someone is looking for to fill that role.
   - Simple: A person's husband, wife, or partner in love or sex, or someone they hope to find for that.
   - _Surveys suggest that people often choose a mate with a similar level of education._
   - _She and her mate of thirty years still hold hands on their evening walks._
4. A friend, usually of the same sex, in informal British and Commonwealth usage. *(colloquial, Australia, British, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa)*
   - Simple: A good friend, often someone of the same sex as you.
   - _Dave's an old mate of mine from school._
   - _She went on holiday with her mates from university._
5. A breeding partner; the animal with which another pairs to produce offspring.
   - Simple: The animal that another animal pairs with to have babies.
   - _Each spring the male returns to the same nest to find a mate._
   - _Penguins may keep the same mate for many breeding seasons._
7. Used as a friendly form of address to a stranger, typically a man of about the speaker's own age; chiefly British. *(colloquial, Australia, British, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa)*
   - Simple: A friendly word for talking to a man you do not know, used a lot in Britain.
   - _Sorry, mate, is this seat taken?_
   - _Easy there, mate. No harm done._
8. An officer on a merchant ship ranking below the captain, especially the first mate, who is second in command.
   - Simple: An officer on a ship who ranks below the captain.
   - _When the captain fell ill, the mate brought the vessel safely into port._
   - _The captain rarely came on deck, so the first mate ran the ship from day to day._
9. Alternative spelling of maté: a South American tea-like drink made by soaking dried leaves of the yerba mate plant in hot water, or the plant itself.
   - Simple: Another spelling of maté. A South American tea-like drink made from a plant's leaves, or the plant itself.
   - _He passed the gourd of mate around the table, topping it up from a thermos._
   - _Mate has a grassy, slightly bitter flavor that many drinkers grow to love._
10. One of a matching pair, or a person or thing that matches or equals another.
   - Simple: The other one of a pair, like a sock or glove, or someone or something equal to another.
   - _The antique dealer owned one silver candlestick and spent years hunting for its mate._
   - _Only one of the two stone lions is in the museum, while its mate still guards a garden across town._
11. In naval ranks, a noncommissioned officer, or the subordinate who assists one, as in boatswain's mate or gunner's mate.
   - Simple: In a navy, a sailor who holds a skilled rank, or the helper who works under that sailor.
   - _He rose from ordinary seaman to boatswain's mate within two years._
   - _Her father retired from the navy as a chief gunner's mate after twenty years._
13. An assistant to a skilled tradesperson, as in plumber's mate or gasfitter's mate; sometimes an apprentice.
   - Simple: A helper who works for a skilled worker, such as a plumber, and sometimes learns the job.
   - _She took a job as a bricklayer's mate to learn the trade from the ground up._
   - _The gasfitter sent his mate back to the van for a longer wrench._
16. Short for checkmate: in chess, a position in which a player's king is attacked and cannot escape capture, which ends the game. — Clipping of checkmate.
   - Simple: Short for checkmate: in chess, when a king is attacked and cannot escape, so that player loses.
   - _White announced mate in three moves._
   - _A back-rank mate caught her completely off guard._

## Verb

2. Of animals, to have sex in order to produce young, with or without a named partner.
   - Simple: For animals, to have sex in order to make babies.
   - _Deer mate in the fall, and the fawns arrive in late spring._
   - _Captive pandas are famously reluctant to mate._
6. Of parts or objects, to fit or join together closely; to fit one part onto another, as a connector or a shuttle on its carrier aircraft.
   - Simple: To fit two parts together closely so that they join with no gap.
   - _The cabinet doors mate so closely that the seam almost disappears._
   - _When the two halves mate correctly, the latch clicks shut._
12. To sort or arrange items so that each one is paired with its match.
   - Simple: To put things together in pairs that match.
   - _Volunteers mate the donated mittens so no pair gets separated._
   - _The clerk mated the returned shoes by size before reshelving them._
14. To join someone in marriage, or to match a person with a marriage partner.
   - Simple: To marry someone, or to find a husband or wife for someone.
   - _The matchmaker promised to mate the young widow to a kind, steady husband._
   - _Their friends always said the quiet couple were well mated, since they shared nearly every interest._
17. Short for checkmate: in chess, to attack the opposing king so that it has no way to escape, winning the game. — Clipping of checkmate.
   - Simple: Short form of checkmate. To attack the other player's king so that it cannot escape, winning the game.
   - _She sacrificed a knight in order to mate on the back rank._
   - _A queen and king can mate a bare king from almost any position._
20. To pair one animal with another on purpose, the way breeders do, so that the two produce offspring.
   - Simple: To put one animal with another so that they will have babies.
   - _Zoos sometimes mate endangered cats with partners from other zoos to widen the gene pool._
   - _The breeder mated her champion collie with a dog from a different bloodline._

## Verb

15. To associate or team up with others as companions, comrades, partners, or the like. *(dated)*
   - Simple: To come together as friends, partners, or companions.
18. To pit oneself against another as an equal; to rival or contend with. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To be as strong or skilled as someone and to compete against them as an equal.
19. To confuse; to confound. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To confuse someone completely, so they do not know what to think or do.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–8, 10–15, 18, 20** — From Middle English 'mate', borrowed from Middle Low German 'mate' ('messmate'). It ultimately comes from Proto-Germanic *gamatô, from parts meaning 'together' and 'food': so a mate was originally someone who shared food, linked to Old English 'mete' ('food').
**Meanings 16–17** — Persian شاه مات (šâh mât) gave the Old French noun mat ("checkmate"). From it came Middle French mater, the source of the Middle English verb maten.
**Meaning 19** — Vulgar Latin *mattō, whose origin is unclear, became Old French mater ("to kill"), and Middle English took this as maten ("to overpower").
**Meaning 9** — From American Spanish mate, the name of both the drink and its drinking vessel, from Quechua mati, the calabash gourd it is drunk from.

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