gate

n.

Gaw pl. gates; Pe pl. gateʒ; WA pl. gatisgats

'way, road, path; way, manner' (Modern English gate)

Etymology

Always derived from ON, cp. OIcel gata ‘way, path, road’ (wk. fem., nom. pl. gǫtur).  The only clear cognates are Go gatwō ‘street’ (wk. fem.) and OHG gazza (wk. fem.), from which a *gatwōn (a fem. -wōn-stem, as in Go) is reconstructed for PGmc. Phonetic criteria are inconclusive, as there is no assurance that *gatwōn would have given an OE *geatwe (and therefore that the lack of palalalization of the ME form could be taken as evidence of loan, as Bj.) rather than a standard wk. fem. minus -w-.  In that event, first fronting and palatalization (and palatal diphthongization) would be historical only in nom. sg. WS *geate, Angl. *gæte, next to oblique forms in *gat- with restoration of /ɑ/ and velar /ɡ/ (e.g. acc./gen./dat. sg. gatan, etc.), and we should expect the latter to be generalized through the paradigm (see Hogg-Fulk §3.116).

PGmc Ancestor

*gatwōn 

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

gata ‘way, path, road’
(ONP gata (sb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far gata, gøta, Icel gata, Norw gate, gote, Dan gade, Sw gata

OE Cognate

Phonological and morphological markers

[absence of palatalization of */ɡ/] (possibly diagnostic)

Summary category

B2abc

Attestation

Recorded mainly from N and E sources in ME, though there are signs of wider distribution inc. in alliterative texts (e.g. Hrl 2253, PP, WPal.).  On the (predominantly N/EM) place-name (and street-name) evidence see EPNE, and further Hough 2010: 10–11; MnE dial usage in N, Sc. and Irel.

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 696, 709, 778, etc.; Pe 395, 526, 619, etc.; Cl 676, 767, 931; Erk 241; WA 143, 516, 812* etc.

Peterson (241n) notes similar metaphorical usages in Erk and Pe.  WA occurrences include þus-gatetrod-gateany-gatesmarch-gats (generally printed as one word).

Bibliography

MED gāte (n.2) , OED gate (n.2) , HTOED , EDD gate (sb.2 and v.2), Dance gate, Bj. 151, de Vries gata, Mag. gata, Bj-L. gate, Orel *3atwōn, Kroonen *gatwōn-, EPNE gata