Mate is a colloquialism used to refer to a friend and is commonly used in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 and South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

. It is or has been used interchangeably with many equivalent terms, such as buddy

Buddy

Buddy may refer to:* A friend or a partner for a particular activity* Buddy , pet of former U.S. President Bill Clinton* Buddy memory allocation, a dynamic memory allocation system for computers...

 (popular in United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

/Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

), pal (Scottish) or bro (New Zealand). It is sometimes abbreviated to M8..

Origin

Mate is a colloquialism

Colloquialism

A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...

 with German or English origins. It is theorised that it started with use by dock workers

Stevedore

Stevedore, dockworker, docker, dock labourer, wharfie and longshoreman can have various waterfront-related meanings concerning loading and unloading ships, according to place and country....

 in the Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

. It might also be derived from the Dutch word maat which means "friend".

See also

• Gender role
  Gender role
  Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
  
  
• Bloke
  Bloke
  Bloke is a slang term for a man. It is commonly used in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. It is however used in French speaking parts of Canada as a derogative term for the English speaking population.Bloke may also refer to:...
  
  
• Dude
  Dude
  A dude is an individual, typically male. The female equivalent, which is used less often, is "dudette" or "dudess". However, "dude" has evolved to become more unisex to encompass all genders, and this was true even in the 1950s....
  
  
• Geezer
• Guy
  Guy
  Guy or guys may refer to:* Guy * Guy, an effigy burned on bonfire night...
  
  
• Everyman
  Everyman
  In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances...
  
  
• Friendship
  Friendship
  Friendship is a form of interpersonal relationship generally considered to be closer than association, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and associations. Friendship and association are often thought of as spanning across the same continuum...
  
  
• Mateship
  Mateship
  Mateship is an Australian cultural idiom that embodies equality, loyalty and friendship. There are two types of mateship, the inclusive and the exclusive; the inclusive is in relation to a shared situation , whereas the exclusive type is toward a third party...
  
  
• Güey
  Güey (vulgar)
  Güey is a word in Mexican Spanish which is commonly used to refer to any person without using his name and applies equally to males and females . It is used in Mexican Spanish in roughly the same way "dude" is used in modern American English...
  
  , a Mexican Spanish counterpart