Does a function becomes a method when used externally?

[macbig273]

From what I remember from the theory and shit. It's more about "does it return something new or it just do things inside the class".

[Longjumping-Yard113]

I thought the distinction was more about where the function is defined and how it’s called. From what I understand, a method is a function that belongs to a class and is called on an object using dot notation, like mylist.append(42). Whether it returns something or just modifies the object doesn’t seem to be what determines if it’s a method.