dated

1. 1
   adjective

   Belonging to an earlier time and superseded by something more current; out of date.

   The lab's dated instruments gave readings nobody trusted anymore.

   Many of the report's recommendations are dated and need revising.

   Similarobsolete, antiquated, outmoded

   Oppositecurrent, modern

   Note

   Applied to words, it describes vocabulary that has fallen behind usage without vanishing. Omnibus is still understood, but bus has taken its place. Unlike the "unfashionable" sense, the point is being superseded rather than going out of style. A dated instrument or recommendation has been overtaken by something more current, not merely abandoned by taste.

2. 2
   adjective

   No longer in fashion or considered stylish.

   The restaurant's dated décor hadn't changed since the seventies.

   Critics called the album's production dated and overly polished.

   Similarunfashionable, old-fashioned, outmoded

   Oppositefashionable, stylish, trendy, contemporary

3. 3
   adjective

   Bearing a date that has been written, printed, or stamped onto it.

   Only a dated receipt would be accepted as proof of purchase.

   Each dated entry in the ledger recorded a single transaction.

   Oppositeundated

4. 4
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of date.

   The couple dated quietly for months before announcing their engagement.

   Archaeologists dated the bones to roughly ten thousand years ago.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty with the "old-fashioned" adjective, and context decides which you have. In "the letter was dated May 3" or "the bones were dated to the Ice Age," it is a passive participle. In "they dated for years," it is the reciprocal romantic verb. Only the adjective takes more dated and most dated.

5. 5
   adjective

   Anachronistic; clearly out of place because it belongs to a different time than its present setting.

   The novel's dated assumptions about technology undercut its futuristic plot.

   Her formal, dated phrasing seemed lifted from a century-old letter.

   Similaranachronistic, antiquated, old-fashioned

   Oppositecontemporary, modern

   Note

   Here the fault is a mismatch between a thing and the moment it now sits in, and the judgment is always made from the present. Kate Julian, writing in The Atlantic in 2018, reports Sex and the City reruns seeming "hopelessly dated." It pairs naturally with seem and nowadays, takes intensifiers like awfully and hopelessly, and often carries a risk: an old usage of a word may now be misread.

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