Did British men really call each other 'mate' in the 1940s?

Anna Wierzbicka's book Understanding Cultures Through Their Keywords has a whole section dedicated to this use of “mate”, it does focus on Australian English where it is a lot more prevalent, but has some quotes from nearly 200 years ago which mirror the way the word is still used today. read more

I am genuinely intrigued about why you thought this was a recent phenomenon. read more

Mark Harrison is right about the origin of mate meaning "spouse/co-breeder" or companion. Come to think of it, companion comes from the same semantic connection: it's originally "sharer of bread" But mate in chess is quite unrelated. read more