acquire

verb ac·quire \ ə-ˈkwī(-ə)r \

|Updated on: 18 Jun 2018

Examples: acquire in a Sentence

Definition of acquire

acquired; acquiring

transitive verb

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

See acquire defined for English-language learners

See acquire defined for kids

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.

Recent Examples of acquire from the Web

Although media reports don’t say how the fowl acquired the name, in my experience white people name everything.

— michael harriot, The Root, "I Wanted to Attend This Vigil For a Dead Chicken Just to Say I Was At The Whitest Thing That Ever Happened," 12 June 2018
The 18th century French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck believed that characteristics acquired in life could be inherited by succeeding generations, imagining that the giraffe’s long neck was the result of generations of prodigious stretching.

— jason pontin, WIRED, "The 19th-Century Crank Who Tried to Tell Us About the Microbiome," 15 June 2018
Nagel, who was expected to meet the publication’s staff Thursday, will be the fifth publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle under Hearst, which acquired the newspaper in 2000.

— owen thomas, San Francisco Chronicle, "Hearst names Bill Nagel as Chronicle publisher," 14 June 2018
Some of those additional workers were brought on board when Tesla acquired SolarCity Corp., the nation’s largest solar panel installer, in a $2-billion deal in 2016.

— laurence darmiento, latimes.com, "Tesla is cutting 9% of its workers as it tries to turn a profit, Elon Musk says," 13 June 2018
Second baseman Dilson Herrera, acquired in the Jay Bruce trade, has raised his batting average by nearly 50 points since May 31.

— bobby nightengale, Cincinnati.com, "Reds Beat Blog: What to do with Cincinnati Reds top prospect Nick Senzel?," 13 June 2018
The hostility between Microsoft and Linux is well and truly over, and developers and businesses are now reacting to the new era of Microsoft acquiring GitHub.

— tom warren, The Verge, "Microsoft’s GitHub acquisition celebrated by Linux Foundation," 8 June 2018
The scandal could hurt the Sixers’ chances of acquiring James in free agency.

— dan deluca, Philly.com, "Jemele Hill is playing the Roots Picnic: The ESPN commentator on the NFL and Donald Trump, Bryan Colangelo and the Sixers," 1 June 2018
Some individuals find themselves in fear of the woods, afraid of acquiring new tick bites and making their illness worse.

— rafal tokarz, Health.com, "The Lyme Disease Complication You Don't Know About—But Should," 31 May 2018

These 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.

Origin and Etymology of acquire

borrowed from Latin acquīrere, from ad- ad- + quaerere "to seek, gain, obtain, enquire"; replacing earlier aquere, going back to Middle English aqweren, borrowed from Anglo-French acquerre, going back to Vulgar Latin *acquaerere, restructuring (by restoring the vocalism of quaerere) of acquīrere — more at ¹quest

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: 15th century

in the meaning defined at sense 1

See Words from the same year