Use of the 'command' built-in in Bash shell

Question

What is the use of the 'command' bash shell built in? This page says that it suppresses the shell function lookup, but I am not sure what it means. Can you explain or give an example?

Answer 1

Observe:

$ date() { echo "This is not the date"; }
$ date
This is not the date
$ command date
Tue Aug  2 23:54:37 PDT 2016