acquaintance
noun
Robert Burns
Did you know?
What's the difference between friends and acquaintances?
People often distinguish between an acquaintance and a friend, holding that the former should be used primarily to refer to someone with whom one is not especially close. Many of the earliest uses of acquaintance were in fact in reference to a person with whom one was very close, but the word is now generally reserved for those who are known only slightly.
Acquaintance is often found paired with nodding. Although nodding acquaintance sounds like it describes a person who is known just enough to nod at, it tends to be used instead to refer to a thing or field with which one has a small amount of knowledge or familiarity (and this is the meaning that the phrase has had since its introduction to the language in the early 19th century).
Examples of acquaintance in a Sentence
Julian Barnes, New Yorker, 20 Sept. 1993
But all those qualities are so wrapped up in others that one could hardly ask for two men who are, at first acquaintance, more different.
—Peter Garrison, Air & Space, October/November 1991
A classical education, or at any rate a very extensive acquaintance with English literature, ancient and modern, appears to me quite indispensable for the person who would do any just to your clergyman; and I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.
—Jane Austen, letter, 11 Dec. 1815
She ran into an old acquaintance at the grocery store.
our family's close acquaintance with our neighbors
She struck up an acquaintance with a man from the city.
He seemed cold at first, but on closer acquaintance I realized that he was just shy.
While he has some acquaintance with the subject, he is not an expert.
Amaia Gavica, Idaho Statesman, 4 July 2025
Much of the prosecution's case relied on testimony from Trenton Raybon, an acquaintance of Berkley, who said Berkley confessed the crime to him.
—Kelly Puente, The Tennessean, 2 July 2025
The landlord, an engineer named Mr. Palit, who occupied the ground floor, was an acquaintance of my parents’ from the late sixties, one of the few members of their Bengali circle who still lived in the city.
—Jhumpa Lahiri, New Yorker, 30 June 2025
On June 20, Princess Eugenie snapped a smiling selfie with a notable acquaintance: designer Misha Nonoo, a longtime friend of Meghan Markle.
—Meredith Kile, People.com, 24 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for acquaintance
Cite this Entry
“Acquaintance.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acquaintance. Accessed 9 Jul. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
acquaintance
noun
Share