ACQUAINTANCE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Acquaintance

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/əkwˈeɪntəns/ Listen

noun

Acquaintance n.

A state of being acquainted, or of having intimate, or more than slight or superficial, knowledge; personal knowledge gained by intercourse short of that of friendship or intimacy; as, I know the man; but have no acquaintance with him. "Contract no friendship, or even acquaintance, with a guileful man."

A person or persons with whom one is acquainted. "Montgomery was an old acquaintance of Ferguson." Note: In this sense the collective term acquaintance was formerly both singular and plural, but it is now commonly singular, and has the regular plural acquaintances.

To be of acquaintance, to be intimate.

To take acquaintance of or To take acquaintance with, to make the acquaintance of. (Obs.)

Synonyms: Familiarity; intimacy; fellowship; knowledge. Acquaintance, Familiarity, Intimacy. These words mark different degrees of closeness in social intercourse. Acquaintance arises from occasional intercourse; as, our acquaintance has been a brief one. We can speak of a slight or an intimate acquaintance. Familiarity is the result of continued acquaintance. It springs from persons being frequently together, so as to wear off all restraint and reserve; as, the familiarity of old companions. Intimacy is the result of close connection, and the freest interchange of thought; as, the intimacy of established friendship. "Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him." "We contract at last such a familiarity with them as makes it difficult and irksome for us to call off our minds." "It is in our power to confine our friendships and intimacies to men of virtue."

See images of 'Acquaintance'

Etymology of 'Acquaintance'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Acquaintance" Quotes from Famous Books

... the afternoon a young girl acquaintance added to Esther's perturbation. "I just met Susan Rogers," she confided to the other, "and she said they hated to give that lamp, but they supposed they were in ...

— Different Girls • Various

... Krantzes—and horrified the nearest baboons with shouts of bass laughter at every word from himself or others which bore the remotest semblance to a joke, and insisted on as many of the strangers as could be got into his house, drinking to their better acquaintance in home-made brandy. The same deadly beverage was liberally distributed to the men outside, and Groot Willem wound up his hospitalities by loading the party with vegetables, pomegranates, lemons, and other fruits from his garden as he sent ...

— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... and graver than herself. Her schoolmates nicknamed her the 'little old maid;' and as she grew older the title did not seem inappropriate. At school her superiority of intellect was manifest, and when she entered society the timid reserve of her manner was attributed to pride, while her acquaintance thought she considered ...

— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... this article—is a real, simon pure, tempered, highly-polished, keen-edged Sheffield razor; bran spanking new; never opened before to sunlight, moonlight, starlight, daylight or gaslight; sharp enough to shave a lawyer or cut a disagreeable acquaintance or poor relation; handle of buck-horn, with all the rivets but the two at the ends of pure gold. Who will give two dollars? one dollar? half a dollar? Why, ye long-bearded, dirty-faced reprobates, with not room on your phizzes for a Chinese ...

— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... date I speak of, however, I was not so young as to attempt to create the characters of a story out of my own imagination, and I believe that the whole of its dramatis personae (except the chief personage) were taken from the circle of my own acquaintance. This is a matter, by-the-bye, on which considerable judgment and good taste have to be exercised; for if the likeness of the person depicted is recognisable by his friends (he never recognises it by any chance himself), or still more by his ...

— Some Private Views • James Payn

More quotes...