An archaic or dialectal word for food, provisions, or a delicacy.
From Old English 'cate' or Old Norse 'katr,' possibly related to 'carry.' It was common in medieval English but is now mostly obsolete except in regional dialects or historical texts.
Words like 'cate' are linguistic time capsules—they show us what medieval people cared about enough to name specifically, and when a word disappears, it tells us what that culture stopped valuing.
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