arranged in or consisting of four parts, as the leaves of certain plants
Word origin
[1745–55; ‹ L quatern(ī) four at a time + -ate1]This word is first recorded in the period 1745–55. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: compressor, debut, input, personification, pompadour-ate is a suffix occurring in loanwords from Latin, its English distribution parallelingthat of Latin. The form originated as a suffix added to a- stem verbs to form adjectives (separate). The resulting form could also be used independently as a noun (advocate) and came to be used as a stem on which a verb could be formed (separate; advocate; agitate). In English the use as a verbal suffix has been extended to stems of non-Latin origin(calibrate; acierate)