Acquaintance vs Family - What's the difference?
acquaintance | family |
(uncountable) 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
* 1799 , '', in ''The Works , Volume 6,
(countable) A person or persons with whom one is acquainted.
* 1848 , , Chapter XVI:
(lb) A group of people who are closely related to one another (by blood or marriage); for example, a set of parents and their children; an immediate family.
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*:Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family' perhaps at a critical moment, when the ' family is just assuming the robes of respectability:it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off.
*{{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty
, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist)
(lb) An extended family; a group of people who are related to one another by blood or marriage.
*1915', William T. Groves, ''A History and Genealogy of the Groves '''Family in America
(lb) A (close-knit) group of people related by blood, marriage, law, or custom, especially if they live or work together.
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A rank in the classification of organisms, below order and above genus; a taxon at that rank.
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*:The closest affinities of the Jubulaceae are with the Lejeuneaceae. The two families share in common: a elaters usually 1-spiral, trumpet-shaped and fixed to the capsule valves, distally.
(lb) Any group or aggregation of things classed together as kindred or related from possessing in common characteristics which distinguish them from other things of the same order.
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A group of instruments having the same basic method of tone production.
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A group of languages believed to have descended from the same ancestral language.
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*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)
, volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= Suitable for children and adults.
Conservative, traditional.
(slang) Homosexual.
In countable terms the difference between acquaintance and family
is that acquaintance is a person or persons with whom one is acquainted while family is any group or aggregation of things classed together as kindred or related from possessing in common characteristics which distinguish them from other things of the same order.As nouns the difference between acquaintance and family
is that acquaintance is 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 while family is a group of people who are closely related to one another (by blood or marriage); for example, a set of parents and their children; an immediate family.As an adjective family is
suitable for children and adults.acquaintance
English
(Webster 1913)Alternative forms
* acquaintaunceNoun
(en noun)- I know of the man; but have no acquaintance with him.
page 22:
- Contract no friend?hip, or even acquaintance , with a guileful man : he re?embles a coal, which when hot burneth the hand, and when cold blacketh it.
- Montgomery was an old acquaintance of Ferguson.
Usage notes
* Synonym notes: The words acquaintance , familiarity, and intimacy 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.Synonyms
* familiarity, fellowship, intimacy, knowledge * See alsoDerived terms
* nodding acquaintanceReferences
* *family
English
Noun
citation, passage=America’s poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richer parts of the emerging world $4 a day is the poverty barrier. But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 ([…]): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}
Obama's once hip brand is now tainted, passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}
Usage notes
* In some dialects, (family) is used as a plurale tantum.Synonyms
* see also * see also nuclear family, immediate family, extended familyDerived terms
* family of curves (matematics)Adjective
(-)- It's not good for a date, it's a family restaurant.
- Some animated movies are not just for kids, they are family movies.
- The cultural struggle is for the survival of family values against all manner of atheistic amorality.
- I knew he was family when I first met him.