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ac·quire | \ ə-ˈkwī(-ə)r 
\
\acquired; acquiring
Definition of acquire
1 : to get as one's own:
a : to come into possession or control of often by unspecified means
acquire property The team acquired three new players this year.
b : to come to have as a new or added characteristic, trait, or ability (as by sustained effort or natural selection)
acquire fluency in French bacteria that acquire tolerance to antibiotics
2 : to locate and hold (a desired object) in a detector
acquire a target by radar
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Examples of acquire in a Sentence
The two ships were acquired by the navy after the war.
The team acquired three new players this year.
The old word has acquired a new meaning.
This apparently minor event has acquired increasing significance in recent weeks.
He is studying the way that language is acquired by children.
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Recent Examples on the Web In 2013, researchers at DeepMind, a UK company later acquired by Google, used reinforcement learning to create a computer program that learned to play several Atari videogames to a superhuman level.
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Will Knight, Wired, "Gamemakers Inject AI to Develop More Lifelike Characters," 27 May 2020 Equipment acquired by the federal government has been slow to trickle down to states, and governors had trouble getting medical supplies as global demand surged.
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Murilo Fagundes, Bloomberg.com, "Covid-19 Is Killing Nurses in Brazil More Than Anywhere Else," 26 May 2020 Few of their decisions leading up to this year were focused solely on 2020 – unlike, say, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who made a massive trade just before spring training to acquire free-agent-to-be Mookie Betts.
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Nick Piecoro, azcentral, "D-Backs' GM Mike Hazen on missing baseball: ‘Hard to imagine what would have been’," 2 May 2020 Pittman said, referring to the longtime Chargers quarterback acquired by the Colts in free agency.
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Sam Farmer, Los Angeles Times, "Teams follow family ties on Day 2 of the NFL draft," 24 Apr. 2020 In an ideal world, SARS-CoV-2 immunity would resemble that acquired by children who get chicken pox.
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Stacey Mckenna, Scientific American, "What Immunity to COVID-19 Really Means," 10 Apr. 2020 According to data acquired by Nielsen, per Vulture, Tiger King drew an average of 19 million U.S. television viewers in its first 10 days on the streamer.
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Kaitlin Reilly, refinery29.com, "Tiger King Became The World’s Quarantine Binge & The Numbers Prove It," 9 Apr. 2020 The production company set up a deal with Lorimar Television (later acquired by Warner Bros.) became the force behind much of ABC's TGIF lineup in the 1990s, with such shows as Full House, Family Matters, and Perfect Strangers.
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Tyler Aquilina, EW.com, "Thomas L. Miller, producer of Full House, Happy Days, and more, dies at 79," 8 Apr. 2020 However, the annual shopping holiday has been postponed from July until at least August due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to internal meeting reports acquired by Reuters.
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Madeline Diamond, Travel + Leisure, "Amazon Prime Day Postponed Due to Coronavirus Outbreak, Report Says," 5 Apr. 2020
See MoreThese example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'acquire.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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More Definitions for acquire
acquire
verbEnglish Language Learners Definition of acquire
formal : to get (something) : to come to own (something) : to come to have (something)
: to gain (a new skill, ability, etc.) usually by your own effort
See the full definition for acquire in the English Language Learners Dictionary
acquire
verbac·quire | \ ə-ˈkwīr \
\acquired; acquiring
Kids Definition of acquire
: to get especially through effort : gain acquire a skill
acquire
transitive verbac·quire | \ ə-ˈkwī(ə)r \
\acquired; acquiring
Medical Definition of acquire
: to come to have as a new or additional characteristic, trait, or ability (as by sustained effort, by mutation, or through environmental forces)
a cognitive system…that is acquired in early childhood— Noam Chomsky bacteria that acquire tolerance to antibiotics insects that acquire resistance to insecticides
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acquire
transitive verbac·quire | \ ə-ˈkwīr \
\acquired; acquiring
Legal Definition of acquire
: to come into possession, ownership, or control of : obtain as one's own
the target's directors don't want the company to be acquired— R. C. Clark the court acquired jurisdiction
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Time Traveler for acquire
The first known use of acquire was in the 15th century
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