When I started learning English som 300 odd years ago, we learned that the word for dating in English was ‘going steady’. That phrase seems pretty archaic nowadays and even if Webster online lists it as a synonym for dating, I don’t think I’ve heard it in a long while.
But I hear ‘going out’ which seems a bit clumsy. I mean dating someone is a lot more than going out[-side]. So when did it pop into ordinary usage and how come it got chosen? Webster doesn’t list ‘going out’ online, btw.
Um, that’d be ‘some 30 years’…
preview is my friend, preview is my friend…
It is short for “going out on the town together”. It’s been around longer than I have, and that’s a long time! By the way, “going steady” implies an exclusive relationship, while “going out” does not.
I’ve always assumed ‘dating’ to be an americanism - the traditional British terms for said activity would be the aforementioned ‘going out’ (with its undertones of school playgrounds), ‘seeing someone’ or (the favourite of embarrassing parents everyewhere) ‘courting’.
OB
In South African English, it’s always been “going out” for either variant, exclusive (“Jan and Katrinkie are going out” -> they are going steady) or not
(“Jan and Katrinkie are going out to the bioscope” -> they are going on a date to the cinema).
“Going Steady” is an Americanism, I think - at least, I can’t recall it’s use in any non-American literaturen here. I think it may only have come into use recentlywith the rise of American TV (and Archie comics!). When I started “going out” with my wife, that meant the same thing as “dating”.
When I hear “going steady” or “dating”, I always think of Riverdale.
I don’t see why, it’s perfectly standard English to use the present participle in aorist.
I once was in Italy talking with an Argentinian about Italy vs. US. He said he thought “it is easier to exit with a girl in the US.”
“Exit?”
“Yes, uh, go out.”
These days what we really mean by “going out” is going in-n-out, in-n-out, in-n-out.
In the U.S., “dating” and “going out (with)” are used more or less interchangeably. You also hear the term “seeing,” as in Joe and Mary have been seeing each other for a few weeks" or “I am seeing a very nice man.” It sounds vague, but in context, you usually know what it means.
OP, here’s my stab at it…
Do you want to go out to a movie on Friday night?
Going out, I suspect came to mean the couple would on repeated occasions “go out”.
Sidenote: Terminology for dating varies from region to region.
In Ottawa:
Seeing someone - semi-commited, but not necessarily exclusive
Going out - exclusive boyfriend/girlfriend contract
Dating - depends on context… can mean seeing or going out.
DodgeRam.