Is GATES a Wordle Word?

Yes. GATES is a valid Wordle word.

It is not on the Wordle answer list, so it is unlikely to be a daily answer.

Plurals ending in S are almost never chosen as Wordle answers.

What does GATES mean?

/ɡeɪts/

A doorlike structure outside a house.
Doorway, opening, or passage in a fence or wall.
Movable barrier.“The gate in front of the railroad crossing went up after the train had passed.”

11 more noun definitions

A logical pathway made up of switches which turn on or off. Examples are and, or, nand, etc.
The gap between a batsman's bat and pad.“Singh was bowled through the gate, a very disappointing way for a world-class batsman to get out.”
The amount of money made by selling tickets to a concert or a sports event.
(flow cytometry) A line that separates particle type-clusters on two-dimensional dot plots.
Passageway (as in an air terminal) where passengers can embark or disembark.
The controlling terminal of a field effect transistor (FET).
In a lock tumbler, the opening for the stump of the bolt to pass through or into.
The channel or opening through which metal is poured into the mould; the ingate.
The waste piece of metal cast in the opening; a sprue or sullage piece. Also written geat and git.
A mechanism, in a film camera and projector, that holds each frame momentarily stationary behind the aperture.
A tally mark consisting of four vertical bars crossed by a diagonal, representing a count of five.

2 more verb definitions

To furnish with a gate.
To turn (an image intensifier) on and off selectively as needed, or to avoid damage. See autogating.

A way, path.
A journey.
A street; now used especially as a combining form to make the name of a street e.g. "Briggate" (a common street name in the north of England meaning "Bridge Street") or Kirkgate meaning "Church Street".

1 more noun definition

Definition from Wiktionary, available under the CC BY-SA license.

Starter word rating: GoodIn the top 6% of all valid Wordle words for testing common letters.
Vowels: A, E
Unique letters: 5 of 5
Common letters: A, T, E

Hard-mode trap: 13 valid words fit the pattern _ATES. If you reach it, you may need several guesses to find the last letter.

Letter ratings use how often each letter appears in Wordle answers.

Tap its tiles to the colours Wordle showed, and the Wordle Solver lists every word that still fits, with the best next guess.