Etymology

maté

Today it means: An evergreen tree, Ilex paraguariensis, native to South America, cultivated for its leaves. Full definition →

Spanish mate ← Quechua mati
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The story

  1. Quechua · derived frommati
  2. Spanish · borrowed frommate
  3. English todaymaté

Borrowed from Spanish mate, from Quechua mati. Here, as well as in the matë variant, the unetymologically accented e serves the purpose in English of marking that vowel as pronounced, as in latte, rather than silent as in mate.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.