date

n 1: the specified day of the month; "what is the date today?"

[syn: {day of the month}]

2: a particular day specified as the time something will

happen; "the date of the election is set by law"

3: a meeting arranged in advance; "she asked how to avoid

kissing at the end of a date" [syn: {appointment}, {engagement}]

4: a particular but unspecified point in time; "they hoped to

get together at an early date"

5: the present; "they are up to date"; "we haven't heard from

them to date"

6: a participant in a date; "his date never stopped talking"

[syn: {escort}]

7: the particular year (usually according to the Gregorian

calendar) that an event occurred; "he tried to memorizes

all the dates for his history class"

8: sweet edible fruit of the date palm with a single long woody

seed

v 1: go on a date with; "Tonight she is dating a former high

school sweetheart"

2: stamp with a date, as of a postmark; "The package is dated

November 24" [syn: {date stamp}]

3: assign a date to; determine the (probable) date of;

"Scientists often cannot date precisely archeological or

prehistorical findings"

4: date regularly; have a steady relationship with; "Did you

know that she is seeing her psychiatrist?" "He is dating

his former wife again!" [syn: {go steady}, {go out}, {see}]

5: provide with a dateline; mark with a date; "She wrote the

letter on Monday but she dated it Saturday so as not to

reveal that she procrastinated"

date

A string unique to a time duration of 24

hours between 2 successive midnights defined by the local time

zone. The specific representation of a date will depend on

which calendar convention is in force; e.g., Gregorian,

Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew etc. as well as local

ordering conventions such as UK: day/month/year, US:

month/day/year.

Inputting and outputting dates on computers is greatly

complicated by these {localisation} issues which is why they

tend to operate on dates internally in some unified form such

as seconds past midnight at the start of the first of January

1970.

Many software and hardware representations of dates allow only

two digits for the year, leading to the {year 2000} problem.

{Unix manual page}: date(1), ctime(3).

(1997-07-11)