Then consider the following.
- An equal partner in an enterprise.
Our earliest citation for this meaning occurs in a deposition before
the New South Wales Magistrates' Court in 1834: `Just before I got to my
own hut I heard the dogs making a great noise and I asked my mate
John Rolfe whose dogs they were'.
The term was especially common during the goldrush period. In 1847 we
find: `I had gained nothing but a partner, or, as the vernacular of the
diggings has it, a mate'.
This sense is also present in the phrase `to go mates' meaning `to work
as an equal partner with someone'. In 1878 we find (again in a goldfields
context): `The Chinese appear to have no quarrels among themselves when
working in partnerships, or as the digging phrase is, going
mates '.
Our evidence for this meaning starts to dwindle in the 1940s. Ask your
parents or grandparents if they would still use the word in this sense.
- An acquaintance; a person engaged in the same
activity.
Our earliest evidence for this meaning comes from Victoria in 1841:
`We told him our mates were gone,
and that we had heard two shots fired'. There is no evidence here that
the `mates;' referred to were especially close friends. They are merely
acquaintances.
During the First World War we find: `The boy had joined his mates
in one of the little cemeteries on the Western front'. In this use of `mates'
it is not necessary that the `boy' had personally known any of the others
who had died; the important point is that they were all engaged in the
same activity.
Is this sense still present in Australian English? If you referred to
`my mates at the football club' would you mean `everyone at the football
club' or `my very close friends at the football club'?
- One with whom the bonds of close friendship
are acknowledged, a `sworn friend'.
Our first evidence for this sense comes from an 1891 text: `Where his
mate was his sworn friend through
good and evil report, in sickness and health, in poverty and plenty, where
his horse was his comrade, and his dog his companion, the bushman lived
the life he loved'.
Henry Lawson (1913) writes: `The man who hasn't a mate
is a lonely man indeed, or a strange man, though he have a wife and family'.
Most of our evidence indicates that in this sense mate is a very male
term. Do you think that this is true of present-day Australian English?
How would you use it in this sense?
Males: Which of the following would
you say?
`I'm going to the football with a few of my mates (Bill, Jim, and Bruce)'.
`I'm going to the football with a few of my mates (Bill, Kylie, Jim, and
Sally)'. `I'm going to the football with a few of my mates (Kylie, Sally,
and Julia)'.
Females: Which of the following
would you say?
`I'm going to the football with a few of my mates (Kylie, Sally, and
Julia)'. `I'm going to the football with a few of my mates (Bill, Kylie,
Jim, and Sally)'. `I'm going to the football with a few of my mates (Bill,
Jim, and Bruce)'.
Put the results up on the board. Are there any significant differences
between male and female uses of the term?
- A mode of address implying equality and
goodwill; frequently used to a casual acquaintance and, especially in recent
use ironic.
This is the sense found in the very Australian expression `G'day mate'.
What is meant by the statement that in recent times the term mate
is frequently ironic? Consider the following quotation from 1983: `When
they call you `mate' in the N.S.W. Labor party it is like getting a kiss
from the Mafia'.
