[1685–95; ‹ L verminātus, ptp. of vermināre to be infested with maggots, to have racking pains, equiv. to vermin(a) racking pain + -ātus -ate1; dual sense of vermināre by assoc. with vermis worm, maggot, vermin- being taken, perh. erroneously, as an extended s. of this word]This word is first recorded in the period 1685–95. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: accumulator, align, blowhole, converge, fatigue-ate is a suffix occurring in loanwords from Latin, its English distribution parallelingthat of Latin. The form originated as a suffix added to a- stem verbs to form adjectives (separate). The resulting form could also be used independently as a noun (advocate) and came to be used as a stem on which a verb could be formed (separate; advocate; agitate). In English the use as a verbal suffix has been extended to stems of non-Latin origin(calibrate; acierate)