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Boyfriend vs Dating - What's the difference?

boyfriend | dating |

As nouns the difference between boyfriend and dating

is that boyfriend is a male partner in a romantic relationship while dating is a form of romantic courtship typically between two individuals with the aim of assessing the other's suitability as a partner in an intimate relationship or as a spouse. The result of dating may at any time lead to friendship, any level of intimate relationship, marriage, or no relation.

As a verb dating is

present participle of lang=en.

boyfriend

English

Alternative forms

* boy friend (dated)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A male partner in a romantic relationship.
  • * 2012 , (Justin Bieber), Boyfriend
  • If I was your boyfriend , I’d never let you go
    I can take you places you ain’t never been before.
  • A male friend.
  • Synonyms

    * (male friend) guyfriend (slang)

    Usage notes

    In contrast to its female equivalent, girlfriend, which is often used to describe a woman's close female friends, the term is not that often used in reference to non-romantic relationships. Boyfriend is a relatively modern term, and in the past has had implications of an illicit relationship (as sexual and romantic relationships outside marriage were generally frowned upon). It is now a generally accepted term and has no negative implications. Use of boyfriend generally implies that the male is a boy or a young man. An older man in a non-marital relationship and sometimes even a young man in a long-term relationship is more often described as a significant other or partner. Separating the word into its two components boy friend'' avoids the romantic implication nowadays, although ''boy friend'' used to mean the same as ''boyfriend does now. However, British and Australian men usually refer to a male friend as a mate. Similarly, Americans and Canadians use the term buddy.

    See also

    * * girlfriend * husband * lover * significant other ----

    dating

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A form of romantic courtship typically between two individuals with the aim of assessing the other's suitability as a partner in an intimate relationship or as a spouse. The result of dating may at any time lead to friendship, any level of intimate relationship, marriage, or no relation.
  • An estimation of the age of an artifact, biological vestige, linguistic usage, etc.
  • * 1922' (Jul), , "Some aspects of the use of the annual rings of trees in climatic study". ''The Scientific Monthly'' ' 15 (1): 5-21.
  • A comparison in seven sequoias between very careful counting and accurate dating in 2,000 years shows an average counting error of 35 years, which is only 1.7 per cent.
  • * 1991 , Onno Ydema, Carpets and Their Dating in Netherlandish Paintings, 1540-1700 , page 120,
  • Finally, with the exception of the rug in the paintings of Willem Duyster, the datings of both groups approximately agree;
  • * 1998 , Niels Lynnerup, The Greenland Norse , footnote, page 46,
  • The results almost always used to illustrate this are the datings of human bones from the Sct. Drotten Church in Lund.
  • * 2007 , Anatoly Fomenko, History: Fiction or Science?: Chronology 1 , page 73,
  • Different dendrochronological datings' have different veracity. The veracity of a dendrochronological ' dating depends on the certainty of the collations on the dendrochronological scale.
  • The setting of a date on which an event or transaction is to take place or take effect.
  • * 1967 , Delbert J. Duncan, Charles Franklin Phillips, Retailing: Principles and Methods , page 352,
  • But C.O.D. datings are relatively rare. They are so disliked by buyers that they are used by sellers only when the latter are quite uncertain of a buyer's ability and willingness to pay.
  • * 1999 , Alexander M. Hicks, Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism , page 227,
  • Pressure from unemployment for retrenchment is evident for the "early" as well as "best" datings' of retrenchment. However, when retrenchment '''datings''' lean toward earlier years, unemployment is not the preeminent factor among the various accelerators and decelerators of retrenchment that it is for the more balanced "best" '''datings''' of Table 7.2 (or that it is, as we shall see, for the "late" ' datings ).
  • * 2008 , R. Charles Moyer, James R. McGuigan, William J. Kretlow, Contemporary Financial Management , page 630,
  • Seasonal datings are special credit terms that are sometimes offered to retailers when sales are highly concentrated in one or more periods during the year.

    Derived terms

    * radiocarbon dating

    Verb

    (head)
  • Anagrams

    *