Ate,
Definition: the preterit of Eat.
A"te, n. Etym: [Gr. (Greek. Myth.)
Definition: The goddess of mischievous folly; also, in later poets, the goddess of vengeance.
-ate. Etym: [From the L. suffix -atus, the past participle ending of verbs of the 1st conj.]
1. As an ending of participles or participial adjectives it is equivalent to -ed; as, situate or situated; animate or animated.
2. As the ending of a verb, it means to make, to cause, to act, etc.; as, to propitiate (to make propitious); to animate (to give life to).
3. As a noun suffix, it marks the agent; as, curate, delegate. It also sometimes marks the office or dignity; as, tribunate.
4. In chemistry it is used to denote the salts formed from those acids whose names end -ic (excepting binary or halogen acids); as, sulphate from sulphuric acid, nitrate from nitric acid, etc. It is also used in the case of certain basic salts.
Eat, v. t. [imp. Ate, Obsolescent & Colloq. Eat (; p. p. Eaten, Obs. or Colloq. Eat (p. pr. & vb. n. Eating.] Etym: [OE. eten, AS. etan; akin to OS. etan, OFries. eta, D. eten, OHG. ezzan, G. essen, Icel. eta, Sw. äta, Dan. æde, Goth. itan, Ir. & Gael. ith, W. ysu, L. edere, Gr. ad. Etch, Fret to rub, Edible.]
1. To chew and swallow as food; to devour; -- said especially of food not liquid; as, to eat bread. "To eat grass as oxen." Dan. iv. 25. They . . . ate the sacrifices of the dead. Ps. cvi. 28. The lean . . . did eat up the first seven fat kine. Gen. xli. 20. The lion had not eaten the carcass. 1 Kings xiii. 28. With stories told of many a feat, How fairy Mab junkets eat. Milton. The island princes overbold Have eat our substance. Tennyson. His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages. Thackeray.
2. To corrode, as metal, by rust; to consume the flesh, as a cancer; to waste or wear away; to destroy gradually; to cause to disappear. To eat humble pie. See under Humble.
– To eat of (partitive use). "Eat of the bread that can not waste." Keble.
– To eat one's words, to retract what one has said. (See the Citation under Blurt.) -- To eat out, to consume completely. "Eat out the heart and comfort of it." Tillotson.
– To eat the wind out of a vessel (Naut.), to gain slowly to windward of her.
Syn.
– To consume; devour; gnaw; corrode.
Eat, v. i.
1. To take food; to feed; especially, to take solid, in distinction from liquid, food; to board. He did eat continually at the king's table. 2 Sam. ix. 13.
2. To taste or relish; as, it eats like tender beef.
3. To make one's way slowly. To eat, To eat in or into, to make way by corrosion; to gnaw; to consume. "A sword laid by, which eats into itself." Byron.
– To eat to windward (Naut.), to keep the course when closehauled with but little steering; -- said of a vessel.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition
3 March 2025
(verb) hold one’s ground; maintain a position; be steadfast or upright; “I am standing my ground and won’t give in!”
The world’s most expensive coffee costs more than US$700 per kilogram. Asian palm civet – a cat-like creature in Indonesia, eats fruits, including select coffee cherries. It excretes partially digested seeds that produce a smooth, less acidic brew of coffee called kopi luwak.
