mateship

mateship

English

Etymology

From mate +‎ -ship. Cognate with Dutch maatschap (“partnership”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

mateship (usually uncountable, plural mateships)

1. (countable and uncountable, nautical) The post of mate on a ship; a posting as mate.
   • 1841, William Chambers, Robert Chambers, Chambers′ Edinburgh Journal, Volume 10, page 263,

     Paul Jones profited by his brother′s position and counsel to improve himself in navigation and other professional studies, and was so successful in the endeavour, that he was deemed worthy of being appointed, on his return to Whitehaven, to a third mateship in a vessel in the slave-trade.

2. (countable, whaling, obsolete) A type of contract between ships to cooperate and share the proceeds of an expedition.
   • 1835, Francis Hilliard, American Law: The Formative Years, page 122,

     […] as, for instance, the contract termed mateship, by which one whaling-ship meeting another forms a partnership in the proceeds of the expedition.

3. (uncountable) Fellowship; companionship.
   • 1898, G. Firth Scott, The Last Lemurian, page 6,

     “Don′t mind if I do,” I answered, and thus begun a mateship that in the course of the next few months was to yield to each of us a fairly big experience of adventure, and, what was more acceptable to me, a good round sum in cash.

4. (uncountable, Australia, New Zealand) Friendship, particularly between men, such as develops in shared adversity; solidarity.
   • 1997, Anna Wierzbicka, Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese, page 117,

     In traditional Australian culture, “mateship” was expected to bind people not only with their “best mates” or their “great mates” but also with their fellow-miners, fellow-shearers, fellow-“diggers”, fellow-soldiers, or fellow-footballers, and this expectation is one of this culture′s most enduring and characteristic features.¹⁹

   • 2004, Graham Seal, Inventing Anzac: The Digger And National Mythology, page 77,

     While the camaraderie of war is usually an unspoken assumption, it seems peculiar that mateship, usually considered to be the core of the digger ethos and the ‘spirit of the Anzac’, barely appears in the diggers′ own expressions at this time.

   • 2009, Albert Moran, Errol Vieth, The A to Z of Australian and New Zealand Cinema, page 186,

     A significant element of masculinity in Australian cultural history, and therefore Australian film, is mateship. […] In times of war, mateship was a measure of the quality of relationship, as a mate was one whom a soldier would happily accompany into the jungle; that is, one who would be dependable and able to offer support.

   • 2011, Rod Giblett, People and Places of Nature and Culture, page 127,

     The bush is the crucible of Australian national identity because it is here that mateship, that linchpin of Australian national identity, was forged.

5. (countable, zoology, psychology, anthropology) A relationship based on mating.
   • 1942, Fred August Moss, Edward Lee Thorndike, Comparative Psychology, page 370,

     The mateships of the three last-named animals are solitary, though in the case of wolves, the separated members of various mateships gather in packs during the winter months.

   • 2005, David J. Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology And The Persistent Quest For Human Nature, page 259,

     Further, in most cultures without systems of codified laws, long-term mateships are ritually sanctioned by the community. If we are not to have too provincial a conception of marriage, these mateships should also count as marriages.

   • 2010, A. Irving Hallowell, 15: The Protocultural Foundations of Human Adaptation, Yehudi A. Cohen (editor), Human Adaptation: The Biosocial Background, page 164,

     In Homo sapiens we find two types of polygamous mateships, polygyny and polyandry, and social structures based on these are ordinarily called “families.” Relatively rare in man in an institutionalized form, polyandrous mateships appear to be absent in infrahuman primates.

   • 2012, Dietrich Klusmann, Wolfgang Berner, Chapter 14: Sexual Motivation in Mateships an Sexual Conflict, Todd K. Shackelford, Aaron T. Goetz (editors), The Oxford Handbook of Sexual Conflict in Humans, page 233,

     The most frequent conflict within human mateships is the conflict between male sexual persistence and female sexual resistance.

Anagrams

• aphetism, shipmate, teamship