Noun
Provisions; food; viands; especially, luxurious food; delicacies; dainties.
Usage- Archaic
- plural
- Plural only
- Examples
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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.
More examples (1)
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?
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!