Variant or inflected form of algate; an archaic term for 'always' or 'at all times' used in Middle English.
Related to algate with possible inflectional variation. The plural or variant form reflects how Middle English speakers modified the already-compound word.
Medieval writers would use 'algates' in poetry and narratives to mean 'always,' but the word is so old that most modern English speakers would think it was a place name!
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