The word gate has various dialectal uses in Scotland, Ireland and England. Apart from meaning an opening in a wall for the purpose of exit and entrance, the word also means a way, a path, a road. "The endless gate of life" was recorded in Shetland. From Aberdeen the English Dialect Dictionary has "We've gane twal mile o' yerd an' mair, The gate was ill, our feet war' bare". A Renfrewshire poet named Young, a down-in-the mouth cove, reminded his listeners in 1865 that "Death is a gate we a' maun gang".

“The king may come in the cadger’s gate” is a line from a poem by Ballantine, published in 1856. “I’d better shool [shovel] a bit of a gate through the snow” was recorded in Lancashire.

The word is often found in place-names. Barnard Gate is in Oxford; Oylegate is in Co Wexford. Hence gaitet, adj, of a horse: broken in or accustomed to the road; gate-end, a road-end, figuratively, quarters, a place of living; gate-less, adj, without a road or pass.

There are some interesting phrases. All gates, means all ways, in every way. To the gate with you: be off. In the gate of: in the direction of. Out the gate, dead and gone.

To be at the gate again: to be in good health, recovered from an illness.

To gang a black or a grey gate: to fall into immorality. To gang out the gate: to run off, flee from justice. To go one's own gate: to go one's own way. To get the gate of one: to get the better of, know how to deal with. To take the gate: to start out on a journey; to go away, depart. To give a person the gate: to dismiss him from one's company. Go your gates is said to a person one wants to go away.

Hence gatelins, towards, in the direction of; to go gatesing, to go part of the way with somebody.

The word also means length of way, distance: “I’ve been to Paris all the gate”; “I’ll see ye half gates home”.

A gate also means way, method. "What would anybody think were they tae see or hear you an me gaun on at this gate?" was recorded in Lanarkshire. "Sure, accordin' to that gait o' goin', its onnatural to turn them up wid a graip or a spade," wrote our own Jane Barlow in Irish Idylls in 1892.

Gate also meant fashion, style. "Surely that style of dress is no longer the gate." I don't think that sentence would be understood anywhere nowadays.