Word Confusion: Ate versus Eight

Plural for noun and third person present verb: eats
Past tense: ate
Past participle: eaten
Gerund or present participle: eating

Plural for noun: eights

Equipment that makes a series of tests automatically

Noun:
Ancient Greek goddess personifying the fatal blindness or recklessness that produces crime and the divine punishment that follows it ²

[Philippines] An elder sister ³

• Used as a polite title or form of address for an older woman

Suffix:
Originated to add a- stem verbs to form adjectives ⁴

A specialization of -ate ⁵, used to indicate a salt of an acid ending in -ic ⁶

• Added to a form of the stem of the element or group such as nitrate, sulfate

Occurs originally in nouns borrowed from Latin, and in English coinages from Latin bases, that denote ⁵:

• Offices or functions
• Institutions or collective bodies such a
• Joined to stems of any origin:
  • Signifies the office, term of office, or territory of a ruler or official
• A period of office or rule

Verb, intransitive:
To consume food ²

Take a meal

To make a way, as by gnawing or corrosion

Verb, transitive:
To take into the mouth and swallow for nourishment ²

Chew and swallow (food)

To consume by or as if by devouring gradually

• Wear away
• Corrode

To make a hole, passage, etc., as by gnawing or corrosion

To ravage or devastate

To use up, especially wastefully

• Consume (often followed by up)

To absorb or pay for

[Slang: Vulgar] To perform cunnilingus or fellatio on

Cardinal number:
Equivalent to the product of two and four

• One more than seven, or two less than ten
• 8

A group or unit of eight people or things

• Eight years old
• Eight o’clock
• Short for figure eight
• A size of garment or other merchandise denoted by eight
• A playing card with eight pips
• An eight-oared rowboat or its crew

Determiner:
Amounting to eight

Noun:
Cardinal number that is the sum of one and seven and the product of two and four

A numeral, 8, VIII, etc, representing this number

[Music] The numeral 8 used as the lower figure in a time signature to indicate that the beat is measured in quavers

Noun:
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, his old and crippled daughters, who followed Ate and repaired the harm done by her (Ate).

My ate is always there for me.

Ate Delita takes care of her elderly mother.

It’s good to see you again, Ate.

Suffix:
He advocated for higher teacher salaries.

Certain nitrates are a specialized class of explosives.

With Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s reforms, the caliphate in Turkey was abolished.

Magistrate is sometimes another term for justice of the peace.

Advocate can be either a noun or a verb.

You’d better separate them dogs.

Don’t pontificate, and don’t agitate that crowd.

Did you calibrate the engine?

It’s starting to accelerate! Move!!

Hillary Clinton has created her own little protectorate.

Potentate is the title of a ruler while khanate and shogunate are the office or government of a ruler.

A consulate is where you go if you need help in a foreign country.

Verb, intransitive:
We ate at six o’clock.

Acid ate through the linoleum.

Verb, transitive:
We ate hamburgers and french fries for dinner.

Rust ate away at the pipe.

Disease and pain ate at the patient.

Fire ate the forest.

Unexpected expenses ate up their savings.

The builder ate the cost of the repairs.

He ate me out.

She bought eight yards of velvet for her skirt.

Her surgery lasted eight hours.

Cardinal number:
We need a committee of eight members.

Eight of the ten were acquitted.

There were eight of the family who were unemployed.

Check to see if we should use viii or VIII.

The win placed Canada closer to the final eight.

Children as young as eight were being pimped out!

Be in time for dinner at eight.

No, really, I wear a size eight.

You won on a pair of eights!?

The sweep oar eight is always coxed.

Determiner:
I could only find eight.

I have eight books.

Noun:
Hot dog buns are sold in packages of eight.

It’s 8:01 p.m.

Eight quavers equal a semibreve (MusicArrangers.com).

1. Unknown.
2. Greek: special use of átē, meaning reckless impulse, ruin, akin to aáein, meaning to mislead, harm.
   • NOTE: The resulting word could also be used independently as a noun, e.g., advocate and came to be used as a stem on which a verb could be formed, e.g., separate, advocate, agitate. In English, its use has been extended to stems of non-Latin origin: calibrate, acierate.
3. Tagalog.
4. Latin -ātus is the masculine, -āta is the feminine, and -ātum is neutral, and equivalent to -ā-, a thematic vowel + -tus, -ta, and -tum past participle suffix.
5. Probably originally in Neo-Latin phrases, such as plumbum acetātum salt produced by the action of acetic acid on lead.
6. 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 a derivative of augur.