date definition

<convention, data> 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 problem.

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

1. 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.

2. To note or fix the time of, as of an event; to give the date of; as, to date the building of the pyramids.

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)

Origin: Cf. F. Dater. See Date.

<botany> The fruit of the date palm; also, the date palm itself.

This fruit is somewhat in the shape of an olive, containing a soft pulp, sweet, esculent, and wholesome, and inclosing a hard kernel.

<botany> Date palm, or Date tree, a bivalve shell, or its inhabitant, of the genus Pholas, and allied genera. See Pholas.

Origin: F. Datte, L. Dactylus, fr. Gr, prob. Not the same word as finger, but of Semitic origin.