date back

1. 1.

   belong to an earlier time

   “This story dates back 200 years”

   Synonymsgo backdate from

   Broaderoriginate

   Narrowerascend

Questions about date back

What does date back mean?

date back means "belong to an earlier time".

What is another word for date back?

Close synonyms include go back, date from. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is date back a common word?

date back is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.