ate
n.n. the past tense of 'eat'. You use it to say that you took food into your mouth and swallowed it.
n. the past tense of 'eat'. Transitive or intransitive depending on whether the specific food item is mentioned.
I ate a large sandwich for lunch today.
We ate at that new Italian restaurant last night and the pasta was excellent.
The guests ate sparingly during the formal reception, as they were more focused on the networking opportunities than the provided refreshments.
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.
Borrowed from Tagalog ate (“elder sister”), from Hokkien 阿姊 (á-ché, “eldest sister”).
The past tense of the irregular verb 'eat'; the past participle is 'eaten'.
I have ate dinnerI have eaten dinnerLearners often confuse the simple past 'ate' with the past participle 'eaten' when using the present perfect tense.