What makes a date a date? Options

[*mipadi*]

Maybe it's my relative lack of experience in the area of relationships, but there's a question that often nags at me: What makes a date a date? At first glance, this may seem like an easy answer; but it's one that seems to elude people I ask. Take, for example, these two different, yet similar, scenarios:

1. You notice a nice young member of the opposite sex with whom you go to school. You think it might be nice to take him/her out sometime—dinner, a movie, something along those lines. So you ask him/her to a movie. Is that a date or just a friendly outing, and why? How do you know? How do you make it clear one way or the other?
2. You are friends with a young member of the opposite sex. You hang out with each other on a semi-regular basis. You decide to ask him/her to a movie or dinner. Is that a date or just a friendly outing, and why? How do you know? How do you make it clear one way or the other?

[*mipadi*]

The thing about "calling it a date" is that, after a certain age, I think, you don't really ask "Will you go out with me?" or "Let's go out on a date?" You just ask to do something, and sometimes, it becomes kind of ambiguous. For example, about a year ago, I was interested in this girl. We hung out a bunch of times, went out a few times. It felt like dating, and I thought we were, but we never verbalized that. Eventually I got the impression we weren't, and we drifted apart. But apparently she thought of us as "dating", too.