In modern English, the nouns vates () and ovate (, ), are used as technical terms for ancient Celtic bards, prophets and philosophers. The terms correspond to a Proto-Celtic word which can be reconstructed as *wātis. They are sometimes also used as English equivalents to later Celtic terms such as Irish "prophet, seer". History of terminology The terminology discussed in this article relates to an Old Celtic word which can be reconstructed as *wātis. This word is not directly attested, but is known from renderings into Greek and Latin and from its descendants in later Celtic languages. Vates in English is a borrowing of a Latin noun vātēs (), 'prophet, poet'. This Latin noun was either a cognate of Celtic *wātis (whereby the two words were descended from a common Italo-Celtic origin), or the Latin word was a loanword directly from Celtic. Despite being borrowed from the Latin form, the English word is generally used about ancient Celtic seers rather than Roman ones. Ovate in English is a borrowing and adaptation of a Greek rendering of the same Celtic term *wātis, first attested in the work of the Ancient Greek writer Strabo. Strabo rendered the Celtic term in Greek in the plural as ouáteis (, Koine: ). The English word ovate is pronounced the way it is due to a misunderstanding of how the Greek word was pronounced. Proto-Celtic *wātis developed in medieval Irish as "prophet, seer". Less directly, it is related to gwawd "panegyric" in Welsh. Celtic wātis is widely thought to have cognates in the Germanic languages, such as the Gothic term wods 'possessed' (though Ludwig Rübekeil 2003 has suggested that the name of the Common Germanic deity may in fact be an early loanword, an adjective * based on Celtic ). If the Celtic word *wātis, the Latin vates, and similar Germanic words are cognates rather than borrowings, they can be derived from an Indo-European word "seer". Virgil uses the Latin "winnowing basket" (conceivably from , compare Old High German , modern German , with the same meaning, from ) for something borne about in the Bacchic festival, suggesting that the root may have had an ecstatic sense in Italic also. The likelihood of this etymology and its relevance to the word vates is, however, doubtful. History of the institution Ancient Rome The earliest Latin writers used vates to denote prophets and soothsayers in general; the word