Other forms: dates, dating, dated
A date is the day something happens, written as a number and a month and a year: 14 March 2019. It is what you put at the top of a letter, what is stamped on a milk carton, what you circle on the kitchen calendar.
The same three letters carry two other lives. A date is an evening arranged with someone you like the look of - a first date, dinner and a film - and a date is a sticky brown fruit that grows on a palm and turns up in boxes at Christmas. As a verb you date a letter, you date someone, and archaeologists date bones to a century. Fixed phrases cluster round it: out of date, up to date, to date meaning up to now, and the church dates back to 1340. One warning, because it catches learners out: if clothes or a film date, they are starting to look old-fashioned.
1noundateThe day, month and year on which something happens.~70%
“Write the date at the top of the form.”
2nounarrangedAn arranged meeting with someone you are romantically interested in.~16%
“They went for coffee on their first date.”
3nounsweetA sweet sticky brown fruit that grows on a palm tree.~2%
“She stuffed the dates with almonds and served them with coffee.”
4verbprintTo write or print the date on something.~2%
“The letter is dated 3 June, two days before he died.”
5verbromanticTo have a romantic relationship with someone.~8%
“They dated for two years before moving in together.”
6verbworkTo work out how old something is.~2%
“The bones were dated to around 8,000 BC.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
This is the origin of the date you eat, not the one you write. It came through Old French from Latin dactylus, from Ancient Greek daktylos, 'finger' - the dried fruit looks like one. Old English had made the same comparison with different fruit, calling it fingerappel, literally finger-apple.
Hebrew
דֶּקֶל — date palm
Arabic
دَقَل — variety of date palm
Ancient Greek
δάκτυλος — finger
oc-pro-old
datil
Latin
dactylus
Old French
date
Middle English
date
English, today
date
From Middle English date, from Old French date, datil, datille, from Latin dactylus (likely via oc-pro-old datil), from Ancient Greek δάκτυλος (“finger”) (from the resemblance of the date to a human finger), probably a folk-etymological alteration of a word from a sem source such as Arabic دَقَل (“variety of date palm”) or Hebrew דֶּקֶל (“date palm”). a doublet of dactyl and dactylus. Displaced native Old English fingeræppel, literally "finger-apple".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA