| 释义 |
▪ I. -ate, suffix1
formerly -at, forming ns. derived from L. ns. in -ātus (-ato- and -atu-), -ātum, -āta, and their modern Romanic representatives.
1. In popular words which lived on into OFr., L. -ātus, -ātum, became (through -ato, -ado, -ad, -ed, -et) -é, as cūrātus, senātus, avocātus, stātus, peccātum, OF. curé, sené, avoué, esté, péché; learned words, adapted from Latin, took -at, as in estat, prelat, primat, magistrat. After 13th c. many of the popular words were refashioned with -at, as sené, senat, avoué, avocat; and all new words have been thus formed, e.g. assassinat, attentat, épiscopat, palatinat, professorat, syndicat. In Eng. these were originally adopted in their Fr. form, estat, prelat, etc.; after 1400, -e was added to mark the long vowel, estate, prelate, etc., and all later words from Fr. took -ate at once. After these, Eng. words are formed directly on L., as curātus ‘curate,’ or on L. analogies, as alderman-ate, cf. triumvir-ate. In meaning, words in -ate are chiefly:
a. Substantives denoting office or function, or the persons performing it, as marquisate, professorate, episcopate, syndicate, aldermanate.
b. Participial nouns, as legate ‘one deputed,’ prelate ‘one preferred,’ mandate ‘a thing commanded,’ precipitate ‘what is thrown down.’
c. Chemical terms, denoting salts formed by the action of an acid on a base, as nitrate, acetate, sulphate, carbonate, alcoholate, ethylate. In the 18th c. chemists said plumbum acetatum ‘acetated lead,’ lead acted on by vinegar, whence substantively acetatum the acetated (product), the ‘acetate’; cf. precipitate, sublimate, distillate. (In the dog-latin of pharmacy, acetas, -ātis, is ignorantly put for acetātum.)
2. In some words, -ate = F. -ate, ad. L. or It. -āta, as in pirate, frigate.
▪ II. -ate, suffix2
formerly -at, forming participial adjectives from L. pa. pples. in -ātus, -āta, -ātum, being only a special instance of the adoption of L. pa. pples. by dropping the inflexional endings, e.g. content-us, convict-us, direct-us, remiss-us, or with phonetic final -e, e.g. complēt-us, finīt-us, revolūt-us, spars-us. The analogy for this was set by the survival of some L. pa. pples. in OF., as confus:—confūsus, content:—contentus, divers:—diversus. This analogy was widely followed in later Fr., in introducing new words from Latin; and both classes of Fr. words, i.e. the popular survivals and the later accessions, being adopted in Eng., provided Eng. in its turn with analogies for adapting similar words directly from L., by dropping the termination. This began about 1400, and as in -ate1 (with which this suffix is phonetically identical), L. -ātus gave -at, subsequently -ate, e.g. desolātus, desolat, desolate, separātus, separat, separate. Many of these participial adjectives soon gave rise to causative verbs, identical with them in form (see next), to which, for some time, they did duty as pa. pples., as ‘the land was desolat(e by war;’ but, at length, regular pa. pples. were formed with the native suffix -ed, upon the general use of which these earlier participial adjs. generally lost their participial force, and either became obs. or remained as simple adjectives, as in ‘the desolate land,’ ‘a compact mass.’ (But cf. situate = situated.) So aspirate, moderate, prostrate, separate; and (where a vb. has not been formed), innate, oblate, ornate, sedate, temperate, etc. As the Fr. repr. of L. -atus is -é, English words in -ate have also been formed directly after Fr. words in -é, e.g. affectionné, affectionate.
2. As with Eng. -ed, L. ppl. adjs. in -ātus were also formed on nouns, etc., when no other part of the vb. was required, as cauda tail, caudātus tailed, and often with negatives, as sensus sense, insensātus unprovided with sense. In modern times these have been liberally adopted in Eng., and on their analogy, or that of corresponding Fr. words in -é, new words are constantly formed where L. actually had not the formation, as apiculate, f. apiculus a little point; lunulate, f. lunula little moon; roseate, f. roseus rosy; angustifoliate, f. angustum narrow + folium leaf.
3. Many words, originally adj., are also used substantively, e.g. delegate, reprobate, precipitate, carbonate, alcoholate, and have gone to reinforce the number of the earlier ns. in -ate1, q.v.
▪ III. -ate, suffix3
a verbal formative, used to english L. verbs of the first conjugation, and to form Eng. verbs on other L. words or elements. This use originated in the formation of verbs from the participial adjs. in -ate mentioned under -ate2.
1. In OE., verbs had been regularly formed on adjectives, as hwít hwítian, wearm wearmian, bysiᵹ bysᵹian, drýᵹe drýᵹan, etc. With the loss of the inflexions, these verbs became, by the 15th c., identical in form with the adjs., e.g. to white, warm, busy, dry, empty, dirty, etc.
2. In Latin, vbs. were also freely formed on adjectives, as siccus siccāre, clārus clārāre, līber līberāre, sacer sacrāre. This prevailed still more extensively in Fr., e.g. sec sècher, clair clairer, content contenter, confus confuser, etc. Thence also Eng. received many verbs, which by the 15th c. were identical in form with their adjectives, e.g. to clear, humble, manifest, confuse, etc.
3. On these analogies Eng. adjectives formed from L. pa. pples. began generally, in the 16th c., to yield verbs of identical form, e.g. adj. direct, vb. to direct; adj. separate, vb. to separate; adj. aggravate, vb. to aggravate: precisely analogous to adj. busy, vb. to busy; adj. content, vb. to content.
4. These verbs, though formed immediately from participial adjectives already in English, answered in form to the pa. pples. of L. verbs of the same meaning. It was thus natural to associate them directly with these L. verbs, and to view them as their regular Eng. representatives.
5. This once done, it became the recognized method of englishing a Latin verb, to take the ppl. stem of the L. as the present stem of the Eng.; so that Eng. verbs were now formed on L. pa. pples. by mere analogy, and without the intervention of a participial adjective. In accordance with this, fascinate, concatenate, asseverate, venerate, and hundreds of others, have been formed directly on the participial stems of L. fascināre, concatēnāre, assevērāre, venerāri, etc., without having been preceded by a cognate adjective. In the case of many words introduced in the 16th c., evidence is wanting to show whether the vb. was preceded by, or contemporaneous with, the ppl. adj. in -ate.
6. These Eng. vbs. in -ate correspond generally to Fr. vbs. in -er (:—L. -āre), as Eng. separate, create, F. séparer, créer: this in its turn gave an analogy for the formation of Eng. verbs from French; as F. isoler (ad. It. isolare:—L. insulāre), Eng. isolate; F. féliciter, Eng. felicitate.
7. Latin vbs. in -āre might, analogically, have been formed on many words, on which they were not actually formed; wherever such a vb. might have existed, a F. vb. in -er, and an Eng. vb. in -ate, are liable to be formed. Thus nōbilitas gave in L. nōbilitāre, the Eng. representative of which is nobilitate; fēlīcitas, which might have given fēlīcitāre, has given F. féliciter and Eng. felicitate; and capācitas, which might have given L. capācitāre and F. capaciter, has actually given Eng. capacitate. Hence numerous modern verbs, as differentiate, substantiate, vaccinate; including many formed on modern or foreign words, as adipocerate, assassinate, camphorate, methylate.
(It is possible that the analogy of native verbs in -t, with the pa. pple. identical in form with the infinitive, as set, hit, put, cut, contributed also to the establishment of verbs like direct, separat(e, identical with their pa. pples.)
▪ IV. -ate, suffix4
in Chem.: see -ate1 1 c. |