Dating
Dating is the practice of meeting and spending time with potential romantic partners to assess compatibility, on a spectrum from casual to committed.
Dating covers the broad set of activities people use to meet, evaluate, and build romantic connections with others, ranging from a single low-stakes coffee date to years of exclusive courtship leading toward marriage. The term predates dating apps by well over a century, tracing to early-20th-century American courtship practices that shifted romantic pursuit from supervised, family-mediated visits toward two people going out together in public, unchaperoned. What counts as "dating" is deliberately broad: it can mean one date, a repeated pattern of casual dates with no defined relationship, or the exclusive, publicly acknowledged stage that precedes a formal relationship label. Because the word covers such a wide range, modern dating culture has layered on more specific terms, such as "exclusive," "situationship," "casual dating," and "LTR" (long-term relationship), to describe where two people actually stand. Dating apps and websites have not changed the underlying goal, evaluating romantic and often sexual compatibility, but they have changed the mechanics: search and filtering replace chance encounters or social introductions as the primary way people meet.