• sate •
Pronunciation: sayt • Hear it!Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: 1. The satisfy any appetite to the fullest extent, to satiate, to gratify completely. 2. To glut, to provide a surfeit.
Notes: Here is a word you might need if you are talking rapidly and need to economize syllables: it is two syllables shorter than satiate and means about the same thing. These two words differ from satisfy in that their meaning is limited to those things about which we may have an appetite for, though not necessarily limited to food.
In Play: The sense of sated lies somewhere between satisfied and jaded: "The nuns' stomachs were sated with dinner and their souls, with prayer." We also have appetites for curiosity: "Most Americans' curiosity for the news was sated by an hour of it a day."
Word History: Today's Good Word comes from Middle English saden "to satiate" from Old English sadian "sated, weary" under the influence of Latin satiare "to satiate". Ultimately, the Old English word came from Proto-Germanic sadon "to satisfy, sate" from PIE sat- "to satisfy". If you are wondering about sad, yes, it too developed from the figurative sense "weary" of sadian. Another Latin word that the Romans made of the PIE root is saturare "to saturate". English took the past participle of this word, saturatus, and created saturate. The Greek rendition of the same PIE root was hadros "thick". Lithuanian made sotis "saturation" out of it. (We are never sated by William Hupy's suggestions of Good Words like today's.)
