MATES

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does mates mean? 

• MATES (noun)
  The noun MATES has 1 sense:

1. a pair of people who live together

  Familiarity information: MATES used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MATES (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A pair of people who live together

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

couple; match; mates

Context example:

a married couple from Chicago

Hypernyms ("mates" is a kind of...):

family; family unit (primary social group; parents and children)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mates"):

power couple (a couple both of whom have high-powered careers or are politically influential)

DINK (a couple who both have careers and no children (an acronym for dual income no kids))

 Context examples 

As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

With such examples before them the wives of the English captains had become as warlike as their mates, and ordered their castles in their absence with the prudence and discipline of veteran seneschals.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

'Bout ship, mates! This here crew is on a wrong tack, I do believe.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I was thy woman to be, Negore, but thou art a coward; the daughter of Old Kinoos mates not with a coward!

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

The captain, the two mates, two warders, Lieutenant Martin, his eighteen soldiers, and the doctor were all that we had against us.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Smoke’s mates were now smiling broadly.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

But Lip-lip was no longer leader—except when he fled away before his mates at the end of his rope, the sled bounding along behind.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

She was a great favorite with her mates, being good-tempered and possessing the happy art of pleasing without effort.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

He and the two mates, are as I learn, the only native-born Americans in the ship. The others are Finns and Germans.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They are likewise of special use to husbands and wives who are grown weary of their mates; to eldest sons, to great ministers of state, and often to princes.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)