What do romantic dates and goodbyes have in common linguistically? You might have been surprised when you learned that ‘a romantic date’ in Russian is ‘свидание.’ Is it the same ‘свидание’ as the one in a farewell ‘до свидания‘? Yes and no.
In the past, the word ‘свидание’ simply meant ‘a meeting.’ So, basically, a goodbye phrase ‘до свидания’ literally means ‘until the next meeting’ (‘see you soon’). The tricky thing is that with time, the word ‘свидание‘ almost lost its meaning as a meeting of any kind and started to be used primarily in a romantic context, specifically when referring to romantic gatherings and dates. Knowing this fact makes it easy to remember how to say ‘a romantic date’ in Russian, so go ahead and use it!
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