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ate

[eyt; Brit. et]

Example Sentences Origin

verb

simple past tense of eat.

Can be confused: ate, eight.

:10

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Ate is one of our favorite verbs.

So is hornswoggle. Does it mean:

to swindle, cheat, hoodwink, or hoax.

to introduce subtleties into or argue subtly about.

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Example Sentences

The men who ate breakfast before exercising gained weight, too, although only about half as much as the control group.

Mao's idea was that since sparrows were pests who ate grain, they needed to be eradicated.

The upshot was that the knockout mice ate considerably more than the normal animals.

EXPAND

The men who ate breakfast before exercising gained weight, too, although only about half as much as the control group.

Mao's idea was that since sparrows were pests who ate grain, they needed to be eradicated.

The upshot was that the knockout mice ate considerably more than the normal animals.

Ten thousand years ago hunters and gatherers ate bugs to survive.

All the rats' offspring and the next generation, the granddaughters, ate a normal diet.

Also when organs are donated they then ate sold for profit.

Then they ate all of one plant, then all of the next, and so onvery orderly and suprisingly disciplined.

Thylacoleo lacked grinding teeth to chew up the vegetation it supposedly ate.

Those people who viewed the streams, or ate up the gossip, also participated.

As for her diet, she ate butter and eggs, which some said were bad for you.

It could be a case of where those individuals tested ate one thing while their peers concentrated on something else.

Dieters who wrote down everything they ate had twice the weight loss of other people following the same diet.

Truth be told, my grandmother and my great-aunt were really the only two in the family who ate them.

It was my second planting because the crows ate the first crop before the peas could unfurl their leaves.

It was an elegantly-designed puzzle app that probably ate up hours of your life if you tried it out.

The job paid well, but it drowned her spirit and ate at her soul.

They ate their land birds to extinction and then they starved.

Other clues to what the animal ate come from the skeleton itself.

Laura didn't know what to do with it and watched everyone as they peeled and ate it in sections.

The myth was that if you ate enough, you'd surely return.

Wars erupted, in which the victors ate the vanquished.

Paleontologists have long debated what ornithomimids ate.

Evidence of our historic fates comes from knowing what eats monkeys or apes today, and from studying what ate now-extinct species.

The accountants ate plates of crawfish, fried chicken and king cake.

Ate it until he got cavities, got taken to the dentist.

Nevertheless, the patterns of the toothmarks indicate a few things about how the predatory dinosaurs ate.

Supporters ate piles of beef brisket and toasted marshmallows at the fire pit.

If you ate today and have shelter from the weather you are successful.

He sat down on the cable and ate a piece of cake, washed down with champagne.

The ones who don't usually eat popcorn ate much less stale popcorn than fresh popcorn.

Meals were delivered to the inmates and they ate in their cells.

Women who ate full-fat ice cream had fewer ovulation-related infertility problems.

Early humans ate only the food they caught and used only the tools they made.

They did smell different when they ate different food.

Swedish women who ate one to two servings of dark chocolate a week.

She ate two big soup bowls full of stew and an entire dinner plate of rice.

New research suggests that justice might actually depend on when the judge ate breakfast.

She ate so little that to her, everything tasted magnificent.

The exact reasons why these mammoths ate dung is difficult to discern, but this behavior is not as unusual as it sounds.

Customers who ate sprouts were found to be almost nine times as likely to be infected as other diners.

We did the whale-watching thing, which was terrific, and ate lots of delicious seafood.

Both wolves and dogs ate cattle and horses, though in small numbers.

Indians ate not only the berries but also the tender young shoots.

Foraging people everywhere ate what was available to them.

But don't bring back horror stories of the fish that died by your head while you ate his brother.

Then the wolf went away to a shopkeeper and bought himself a great lump of chalk, ate this and made his voice soft with it.

If you lived at the shore, you ate tons of shellfish.

Johnson's team found that the spiders were quicker to attack and ate more food when they'd gone longest without eating.

We cooked their food first, then ate our own dinners and camped comfortably in woodstove-heated tents beneath the auroras.

But nobody ate it, and it still looks as fresh as it did the day it was made, twelve years ago.

The dingo competed with the thylacine for food-and also ate it.

The best part is that each ant who ate the tainted rice produced a mushroom that produced millions of spores.

We listened in the dark for the screeching sound the bats made when the boas constricted and then ate them.

People who ate more fruits and vegetables had a slightly different carotenoid-induced skin hue that was rated more.

The volunteers were on bed rest the entire time and ate the same amount of calories at the same time each day.

When he tried to tame lions, they ate him, scorning the thin hoop he flourished in their direction.

Because of this, measuring fluctuating carbon ratios in elephant hair helps indicate what the animals recently ate.

The only thing that seemed to differ was when the mice ate.

It lived in warm lakes and ate fish with its toilet seat mouth.

One group ate a restrictive, low-protein diet whereas the other dined on protein-rich foods.

We started a campfire, ate a dinner of steak and potatoes and turned in for the night.

She said she drank water with a little salt, and sometimes she ate some food.

Dietary isotopes from their knee-bones show that they ate pretty healthily.

Animal bones found with charcoal lead researchers to surmise that humans cooked and ate the animals as food.

Later they even ate clay purchased at an arts-and-crafts store.

Used to both sides' making such claims baselessly, the police ate their dinner instead.

The ape subsequently tore apart and ate the smaller primate.

Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert.

They found that those who had survived marasmus ate differently from those who had survived kwashiorkor.

Participants in the former group ate nearly twice as much unsaturated fat than did those in the latter group.

Online, he questioned whether it was okay to take meals with his parents, even though they ate meat he considered unclean.

Then they cooked and ate her two daughters in front of her.

Instead, it ate up millions of his own dollars and was sold off two years later.

They ate the walrus' meat and whittled its bones into tools.

After fasting overnight and having their blood fat levels tested, the subjects ate up.

Who paid for all of those folks who ate the salmonella eggs.

For six months, they all ate the same animal-protein-based diet.

Fossil bedsdinosaurs that ate or were eaten by others of their species died at the same time in the same spotodd.

Humans as hunters and gathers ate what they could gather and catch.

COLLAPSE

Dictionary.com Unabridged

noun

an ancient Greek goddess personifying the fatal blindness or recklessness that produces crime and the divine punishment that follows it.

Origin:
< Greek, special use of átē reckless impulse, ruin, akin to aáein to mislead, harm

equipment that makes a series of tests automatically.

Origin:
a(utomatic) t(est) e(quipment)

a suffix occurring in loanwords from Latin, its English distribution paralleling that of Latin. The form originated as a suffix added to a-stem verbs to form adjectives (separate). The resulting form could also be used independently as a noun (advocate) and came to be used as a stem on which a verb could be formed (separate; advocate; agitate). In English the use as a verbal suffix has been extended to stems of non-Latin origin: calibrate; acierate.

Origin:
< Latin -ātus (masculine), -āta (feminine), -ātum (neuter), equivalent to -ā- thematic vowel + -tus, -ta, -tum past participle suffix

a specialization of -ate¹, used to indicate a salt of an acid ending in -ic, added to a form of the stem of the element or group: nitrate; sulfate.

Compare -ite¹.

Origin:
probably originally in Neo-Latin phrases, as plumbum acetātum salt produced by the action of acetic acid on lead

a suffix occurring originally in nouns borrowed from Latin, and in English coinages from Latin bases, that denote offices or functions (consulate; triumvirate; pontificate), as well as institutions or collective bodies (electorate; senate); sometimes extended to denote a person who exercises such a function (magistrate; potentate), an associated place (consulate), or a period of office or rule (protectorate). Joined to stems of any origin, ate³ signifies the office, term of office, or territory of a ruler or official (caliphate; khanate; shogunate).

Origin:
< Latin -ātus (genitive -ātūs), generalized from v. derivatives, as augurātus office of an augur (augurā(re) to foretell by augury + -tus suffix of v. action), construed as derivative of augur augur

verb (used with object)

to take into the mouth and swallow for nourishment; chew and swallow (food).

to consume by or as if by devouring gradually; wear away; corrode: The patient was eaten by disease and pain.

to make (a hole, passage, etc.), as by gnawing or corrosion.

to ravage or devastate: a forest eaten by fire.

to use up, especially wastefully; consume (often followed by up): Unexpected expenses have been eating up their savings.

EXPAND

to absorb or pay for: The builder had to eat the cost of the repairs.

Slang: Vulgar. to perform cunnilingus or fellatio on.

COLLAPSE

verb (used without object)

to consume food; take a meal: We'll eat at six o'clock.

to make a way, as by gnawing or corrosion: Acid ate through the linoleum.

noun

10.

eats, Informal. food.

Verb phrases

11.

eat away/into, to destroy gradually, as by erosion: For eons, the pounding waves ate away at the shoreline.

12.

eat out, to have a meal at a restaurant rather than at home.

13.

eat up,

to consume wholly.

to show enthusiasm for; take pleasure in: The audience ate up everything he said.

to believe without question.

Idioms

14.

be eating someone, Informal. to worry, annoy, or bother: Something seems to be eating him—he's been wearing a frown all day.

15.

eat crow. crow¹ (def. 7).

16.

eat high off the hog. hog (def. 9).

17.

eat humble pie. humble pie (def. 3).

18.

eat in, to eat or dine at home.

EXPAND

19.

eat one's heart out. heart (def. 24).

20.

eat one's terms. term (def. 17).

21.

eat one's words. word (def. 15).

22.

eat out of one's hand. hand (def. 49).

23.

eat someone out of house and home, to eat so much as to strain someone's resources of food or money: A group of hungry teenagers can eat you out of house and home.

24.

eat someone's lunch, Slang. to thoroughly defeat, outdo, injure, etc.

25.

eat the wind out of, Nautical. to blanket (a sailing vessel sailing close-hauled) by sailing close on the weather side of.

COLLAPSE

Origin:
before 900; Middle English eten, Old English etan; cognate with German essen, Gothic itan, Latin edere

Related forms

eat·er, noun

out·eat, verb (used with object), -ate, -eat·en, -eat·ing.

un·der·eat, verb (used without object), -ate, -eat·en, -eat·ing.

Link To ate

Collins

World English Dictionary

ate (ɛt, eɪt)

—vb
	the past tense of eat

Ate (ˈeɪtɪ, ˈɑːtɪ)

—n
	Greek myth a goddess who makes men blind so that they will blunder into guilty acts

[C16: via Latin from Greek atē a rash impulse]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

eat

O.E. etan (class V strong verb; past tense æt, pp. eten), from P.Gmc. *etanan (cf. O.N. eta, Goth. itan, Ger. essen), from PIE base *ed- "to eat" (see edible). Transferred sense of "slow, gradual corrosion or destruction" is from 1550s. Meaning "to preoccupy, engross"

EXPAND

(as in what's eating you?) first recorded 1893. Slang sexual sense of "do cunnilingus on" is first recorded 1927. Eat out "dine away from home" is from 1933. The slang phrase to eat one's words is from 1570s; to eat one's heart out is from 1590s; for eat one's hat, see hat.

ate

p.t. of eat (q.v.).

-ate

verbal suffix for L. verbs in -are. O.E. commonly made verbs from adjectives by adding a verbal ending to the word (e.g. gnornian "be sad, mourn," gnorn "sad, depressed"), but as the inflections wore off English words in late O.E. and M.E., there came to be no difference between the adj. and the verb

in dry, empty, warm, etc. Accustomed to the identity of adjectival and verbal forms of a word, the English, when they began to expand their Latin-based vocabulary after c.1500, simply made verbs from L. pp. adjs. without changing their form (e.g. aggravate, substantiate) and thus it became the custom that L. verbs were Anglicized from their pp. stems.

COLLAPSE

American Heritage

Medical Dictionary

-ate suff.

A derivative of a specified chemical compound or element: aluminate.
A salt or ester of a specified acid whose name ends in -ic: acetate.

eat (ēt)
v. ate (āt), eat·en (ēt'n), eat·ing, eats

To take into the body by the mouth for digestion or absorption.
To consume, ravage, or destroy by or as if by ingesting, such as by a disease.

American Heritage

Science Dictionary

-ate
A suffix used to form the name of a salt or ester of an acid whose name ends in -ic, such as acetate, a salt or ester of acetic acid. Such salts or esters have one oxygen atom more than corresponding salts or esters with names ending in -ite. For example, a sulfate is a salt of sulfuric acid and contains the group SO₄, while a sulfite contains SO₃. Compare -ite.

Slang Dictionary

eat (sth) definition

tv.
to consume something rapidly, such as food or money. : Running this household eats my income up.
tv.
to believe something. : Those people really eat that stuff up about tax reduction.
tv.
to appreciate something. : The stuff about the federal budget went over well. They really ate up the whole story.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
Cite This Source

American Heritage

Abbreviations & Acronyms

ATE
automatic test equipment

Encyclopedia Britannica

Encyclopedia

Ate

Greek mythological figure who induced rash and ruinous actions by both gods and men. She made Zeus-on the day he expected the Greek hero Heracles, his son by Alcmene, to be born-take an oath: the child born of his lineage that day would rule "over all those dwelling about him" (Iliad, Book XIX). Zeus's wife, the goddess Hera, implored her daughter Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to delay Heracles' birth and to hasten that of another child of the lineage, Eurystheus, who would therefore become ruler of Mycenae and have Heracles as his subject. Having been deceived, Zeus cast Ate out of Olympus, after which she remained on earth, working evil and mischief. Zeus later sent to earth the Litai ("Prayers"), his old and crippled daughters, who followed Ate and repaired the harm done by her.

Learn more about Ate with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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eat (sth) definition