A cate is a delicacy, a dainty, a treat, a choice morsel, a tidbit. Because no one in their right mind ever buys a single tidbit, cate is almost always used in the plural, cates. Like the word caterer to which it is related, cate derives from the French verb acheter, meaning to purchase. In fact, when the word cate first entered English in the middle of the fifteenth century it referred to any food or provision, not just dainties, that were purchased instead of being made at home. Within a hundred years of its first appearance, however, the meaning of cate had narrowed to include only dainties and treats. This narrowing occurred for several reasons. First, then as now, when people prepared a meal, they were more likely to buy the dessert\u2014the cheesecake\u2014than to buy the main course\u2014the meat and potatoes; as a result, cates came to be associated with dessert items. Second, the coincidence of the word delicate containing the word cate may have led people to associate cates with delicacies even though the words are not related; it is certain that delicate cates became a common phrase at the end of the sixteenth century. Finally, the word cate may have become associated with another word to which it is not related, the woman’s name Kate; in the Taming of the Shrew, for instance, Shakespeare links the word and the name when Petruchio calls his fiancee Katharina his “super-daintie Kate.” This association of the word cate with a name belonging to the so-called “delicate” sex may have also contributed to the “daintification” of cates.<\/p>\n
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A cate is a delicacy, a dainty, a treat, a choice morsel, a tidbit. Because no one in their right mind ever buys a single tidbit, cate is almost always used in the plural, cates. Like the word caterer to which it is related, cate derives from the French verb acheter, meaning to purchase. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c"],"yoast_head":"\n