vates
/ˈveɪtiz/noun
vates is a noun meaning “A poet or bard who is divinely inspired” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-A-T-E-S, and it appears about once in every 69 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does vates mean?
noun
- 1
A poet or bard who is divinely inspired.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce vates?
- /ˈveɪtiz/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-vates.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
How common is vates?
Vates appears about once in every 69 million words in written English, the 262,293rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Vates in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense divinely inspired poet:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does vates come from?
From Latin vātēs, from Proto-Indo-European *weh₂t- (“excited, possessed”); cognate with Proto-Celtic *wātis (“seer”) (Gaulish ουατεις, Old Irish fáith, Welsh gwawd) and Proto-Germanic *wōdaz (“mad”) (Old English wōd (“mad, frenzied”), Gothic 𐍅𐍉𐌳𐍃 (wōds, “possessed, mad”), Old High German wuot (“mad, madness”). More at wood (“crazy, mad, insane”) and wode.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).