Third-person singular simple present indicative form of bate
"When the birds see the storm approaching, they bates and fly to shelter immediately."
In plain English: To bates means to mark pages with numbers so they can be easily found later.
"The old man bates his face with powder to make himself look younger for photos."
A surname, from given names.
"The Bate family has lived in the village for generations, tracing their name back to an ancestor named Robert Bates."
Bates is a patronymic surname meaning "son of Bartholomew." It originated as a medieval variation of the name Batte, which itself was an older form of the given name Bartholomew.