/meɪt/
[noun] A friend, partner, or companion; also used to refer to one's spouse or romantic partner, or a fellow worker. In many English-speaking countries, especially Britain and Australia, it is a very common and friendly way to address another person.
The word 'mate' and the word 'meat' share the same ancient root — both originally meant 'sharing food together.'
The word 'mate' arrived in English during the 14th century, borrowed from Middle Low German 'gemate', which meant a person who eats at the same table — a messmate or companion at meals. This word itself descended from Proto-Germanic, combining the prefix 'ga-' (meaning 'together') with 'matiz', meaning food. That root 'matiz' is closely related to the Old English word 'mete', meaning food or solid nourishment, which survives today in our word 'meat'. So at the very beginning, a 'mate' was simply someone you sat down and shared a meal with — a table companion.
The semantic journey from 'person who eats with you' to 'close friend or partner' is easy to follow when you consider how central shared meals were to social life in medieval Europe. To eat with someone was to trust them, to belong to the same household or crew. The word moved naturally from the dining table to the ship's deck: by the 15th century, 'mate' was firmly established in nautical English, where a 'first mate' or 'boatswain's mate' referred to a fellow sailor or a ranked officer who worked alongside the captain. The sea carried the word — and sailors carried it back to shore.
In everyday speech, 'mate' broadened steadily through the 16th and 17th centuries to mean any close companion, workmate, or friend. The compounding habit of English helped it along: 'workmate', 'classmate', 'roommate', 'playmate', and 'shipmate' all used 'mate' as a suffix to describe someone who shares a particular space or activity with you. Each compound preserved that original idea of togetherness — people joined by a common experience rather than by blood or duty.
The word also acquired a biological meaning: the 'mate' of an animal is its breeding partner, and the verb 'to mate' means to pair for reproduction. This sense, which appeared in the 16th century, extended the core idea of companionship into the natural world. By the 18th and 19th centuries, 'mate' had also become the standard English word for a husband or wife in informal or affectionate speech, a usage that survives strongly today, particularly in Australian and American English.
Perhaps the most famous modern life of 'mate' is as a casual form of address, especially in British and Australian English, where 'mate' functions much as 'buddy' or 'pal' does in American English. In Australia in particular, 'mateship' — the ideal of loyal, egalitarian friendship between men, forged in hardship — became a genuine cultural value, celebrated in literature and mythology around the experiences of soldiers, farmers, and workers. What began as a word for a dining companion had become the cornerstone of a national identity.
It is worth noting that 'mate' in chess — 'checkmate' — comes from a completely different source: the Arabic phrase 'shah mat' (شاه مات), meaning 'the king is dead'. Though the two words look and sound alike in English, they arrived by entirely separate roads, one from the mess halls of medieval northern Europe, the other from the courts and coffeehouses of the medieval Islamic world. It is one of those beautiful coincidences that English, a great collector of borrowed words, holds both side by side.