cates

Provisions; food; viands; especially, luxurious food; delicacies; dainties.

Noun

  1. Provisions; food; viands; especially, luxurious food; delicacies; dainties.
    • I had rather live / With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far, / Than feed on cates and have him talk to me / In any summer house in Christendom. - a. 1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, act 3, scene 1, lines...
    • Hath any rival glutton got the start, / And beat him in his own luxurious art; / Bought cates for which Apicius could not pay, / Or drest old dainties in a newer way? - 1764, Charles Churchill, The Times:
    • I tempted his blood and his flesh, / Hid in roses my mesh, / Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth— / Still he kept to his filth! - 1855, Robert Browning, “Instans Tyrannus”, in Men and Women, lines 19–22:

Origin

Compare acates, and see cater.