Word Direct Answers

What does "date" mean?

Date: That addition to a writing, inscription, coin, etc., which specifies the time (as day, month, and year) when the writing or inscription was given, or executed, or made; as, the date of a letter, of a will, of a deed, of a coin. etc. And bonds without a date, they say, are void. Dryden.

Additional senses

  1. 2.The point of time at which a transaction or event takes place, or is appointed to take place; a given point of time; epoch; as, the date of a battle. He at once, Down the long series of eventful time, So fixed the dates of being, so disposed To every living soul of every kind The field of motion, and the hour of rest. Akenside.
  2. 3.Assigned end; conclusion. [R.] What Time would spare, from Steel receives its date. Pope.
  3. 4.Given or assigned length of life; dyration. [Obs.] Good luck prolonged hath thy date. Spenser. Through his life's whole date. Chapman. To bear date, to have the date named on the face of it; -- said of a writing.
  4. 5.To note the time of writing or executing; to express in an instrument the time of its execution; as, to date a letter, a bond, a deed, or a charter.
  5. 6.To note or fix the time of, as of an event; to give the date of; as, to date the building of the pyramids. Note: We may say dated at or from a place. The letter is dated at Philadephia. G. T. Curtis. You will be suprised, I don't question, to find among your correspondencies in foreign parts, a letter dated from Blois. Addison. In the countries of his jornal seems to have been written; parts of it are dated from them. M. Arnold.
  6. 7.To have beginning; to begin; to be dated or reckoned; -- with from. The Batavian republic dates from the successes of the French arms. E. Everett.

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