overwordExplorer
ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

ate.

An elder sister

3 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun[ˈʔɐ.te]Philippines
  1. An elder sister

    Philippines
  2. A respectful title or form of address for an older woman.

    Philippines
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Tagalog ate (“elder sister”), from Hokkien 阿姊 (á-ché, “eldest sister”).

verb/eɪt/General-American, Received-Pronunciation[eːt]Canada/ɛt/
  1. simple past of eat

    form-of · past
  2. past participle of eat

    colloquial · form-of · nonstandard · participle · past
Where this word comes from

Probably a remodelling of earlier eat by analogy with other strong verbs such as break:†brake, give:gave, speak:†spake; compare the same process in rare Middle English at (“ate”) besides more usual et. However, the pronunciation /ɛt/ likely continues Middle English et, from Old English ǣt, from Proto-West Germanic *āt, from Proto-Germanic *ēt, with shortening as in e.g. thread.

FROM WORD TO NAME

Try it on your idea.

ate has 3 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.

ate studioate workshello, ate

These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.

Explore the name generator

A word with a source.

Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.