Verb

(en verb)

To design a new process or mechanism.

After weeks of hard work, I invented a new way to alphabetize matchbooks.

To create something fictional for a particular purpose.

I knew I had to invent an excuse, and quickly.

We need a name to put in this form, so let's just invent one.

(obsolete) To come upon; to find; to find out; to discover.

* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , I.vi:

Far off he wonders, what them makes so glad, / If Bacchus merry fruit they did inuent [...].

Verb

(acquir)

To get.

To gain, usually by one's own exertions; to get as one's own, as, to acquire a title, riches, knowledge, skill, good or bad habits.

* (Isaac Barrow) (1630-1677)

No virtue is acquired in an instant, but step by step.

* (William Blackstone) (1723-1780)

Descent is the title whereby a man, on the death of his ancestor, acquires his estate, by right of representation, as his heir at law.

*{{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Michael Arlen), chapter=3/19/2, title= “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days

, passage=Ivor had acquired more than a mile of fishing rights with the house?; he was not at all a good fisherman, but one must do something?; one generally, however, banged a ball with a squash-racket against a wall.}}