What’s the most versatile word we have? Mate, that’s easy

Mate is a false friend. The moment you think you know a word, it betrays you. Not just one, but twice. “Mate, how could you do such a thing? I thought we were mates.”

You may think mate links to other amatory words such as amiable and amity. Even amateur seems a plausible cousin, nursing mate in its breast, alluding to the fan driven by love over appearance fee. Think devotee, the enthusiast who tackles projects out of passion, just as mates do.

Friends: if it was Australian, it would’ve been Maaaates.

That’s Treachery Number 1, since mate has greater ties to tucker than ticker. True, the China plate of rhyming slang has more to do with an ordinary plate of meat. The root is Middle Low German, in which “gemate” is a table-sharer. Just as companion derives from “panis”, the Latin bread, because mates go halves in pizzas and panini.

Maritime life deepened the idea. Distinct from stevedores or general labourers, mates shared the captain’s table and broke bread with other ranks. Instead of beating hearts, the word murmurs the rubbing of elbows, the passing of salt among fellow salts.

Messmates, in a sense. Though not to be muddled with the messmate eucalypt, a gum owing its name to its bark tassels helping to fuel a campfire. Together, the tree and seaboard table place mate amid food culture. Amigo in Spanish means friend, a male friend. Just as ami (he) and amie (her) echo in French. Yet in Australian English, mate is far more than friend. The term is complex. Layered. This introduces Treachery Number 2.

Hand-in-hand, mate can escort other nouns: workmate and housemate, crewmate and classmate. See the pattern? As the compounds show, mates can be those you stand beside whether you like them or not. Yokemates of fate, teammates thrown together, just as those First Fleet inmates coexisted with shipmates. Proximity by destiny, from Portsmouth to Parramatta, for eight formative months.

Come landfall, mates in shackles were overseen by guards in worsted, custodians replacing the first mates at sea. In captivity, in isolation, mate adopted a borrowed intimacy in the colony, a defiance as much as a disregard of class and station. Gaining tickets of leave, inmates became grazing or droving mates, shearing or boarding mates. Timber cutters with two-man saws. Diggers on the goldfields. Friends perhaps, but not necessarily. More colleagues as chums, allies in the ruckus, sharers of damper and profit.

Given all that, mate wears two vernacular cloaks. Cartoonist Cathy Wilcox caught it months back, depicting a Ukrainian soldier hanging from a cliff by his fingernails. Above, lost in his phone, a passing Aussie utters, “Sorry mate – I just don’t know if we’ve got enough attention span.” Scant care and no responsibility.

Last year, The Guardian’s Paul Daley reported on a road-rage episode in which Ute-Bloke bellowed with malign intent at Sedan-Man, each driver using mate as code for dickhead. Tone is everything, potentially seeing mate devolve from bestie to mongrel. Add a few vowels, converting mate to maaaate, and our so-called endearment can summon hostilities, or fondness, depending on your breath.

Nonetheless, a single truth keeps us united, forever bound as mates in arms. In every survey on the word – and there have been more than a few in recent times – Australians are in fierce consensus when it comes to politicians using mate, the word their bid to invoke shared values, a national camaraderie, a transient rapport. Mate, we can’t stand that bullshit.

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