Meaning of acquire in English

acquire

verb [ T ]

/əˈkwaɪər/ us

/əˈkwaɪɚ/

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to get or obtain something:

From humble beginnings he went on to acquire great wealth.

newly acquired I was wearing a newly acquired jacket.

recently acquired The museum will put the recently acquired Picasso on display this spring.

seem to have acquired I seem to have acquired (= have got although I don't know how) two copies of this book.

Synonyms

buy  (PAY FOR)
get (OBTAIN)
get hold of informal
obtain (GET) formal
pick something up (BUY)
purchase  formal
snap something up informal

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

to receive or be given something

getI got a new bike for my birthday.
receiveYou will receive your tickets by email.
obtainAfter many years of trying, she finally obtained Brazilian citizenship.
gainYou will improve at the job as you gain experience.
earnEventually, you will earn the dog's trust.
achieveShe achieved top marks in the physics exam.

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business specialized

to buy a business or property, or buy shares in a business:

He acquired the firm in 2008.

In 1949 the property was acquired by United Steel Companies.

The airline will acquire a 49 percent share of its rival.

It took several years to find and acquire the land needed for the project.

media, publishing specialized

to buy or obtain the right to sell or publish something, for example the right to publish a particular work or the works of a particular writer:

He acquired Winnie-the-Pooh merchandising rights from A. A. Milne, the author of the children's stories.

The book was acquired by Sarah McGill, an editor at Riverdale Books.

Warner Bros. acquired the rights to the movie in North America.

to gradually learn or gain something such as a language or skill:

We want to understand more about how children acquire language.

The purpose of university is to acquire knowledge and critical thinking skills.

acquire a habit With practice, students can acquire better study habits.

acquire a reputation He has acquired a reputation for being difficult to work with.

acquire a taste for I soon acquired a taste for the local cuisine.

medical specialized

to develop a medical condition or catch a disease that you were not born with:

They develop gene therapy products for the treatment of acquired and inherited diseases.

They estimate that millions of patients every year acquire infections while in hospital.

More examplesFewer examples

She acquired the painting at a jumble sale for the princely sum of 25p.
When she married Giles, she acquired a ready-made family - two teenage sons and a daughter.
As people grow older, their faces acquire more character.
To build his market share, he acquired the rights to existing games such as Clue, Sorry and Risk, rather than depending solely on himself to invent new games.
I didn't like red wine before but I acquired a taste for it while I was living in France.
He acquired a reputation as an entertaining speaker.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Getting, receiving and accepting

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Buying

Mergers & acquisitions

Cinema & theatre: production, direction & recording

Learning & knowing

Having and owning - general words

Being & falling ill

Idiom

an acquired taste

(Definition of acquire from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

acquire | American Dictionary

acquire

verb [ T ]

/əˈkwɑɪər/

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to obtain or begin to have something:

His family acquired the property in 1985.

She acquired her love of the outdoors as a child.

(Definition of acquire from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

acquire | Business English

acquire

verb [ T ]

/əˈkwaɪər/ us

Add to word list Add to word list

to buy or take control of a company or part of a company, often by buying shares in it:

They acquired a chain of about 20 phone shops.

acquire control/ownership of sth He had just acquired control of the New York Times.

be acquired by sb/sth Mutual of New York was later acquired by French insurance conglomerate AXA.

Many checkout staff acquired shares in the company.

MARKETING

to get the legal right to use or do something:

acquire rights to sth The broadcaster did not disclose exactly how it acquired rights to the material.

to get something that is important to your business:

We've acquired a million new customers in a year.

It's a good time to acquire new talent.

WORKPLACE

to get something that is important to you in your job:

Aptitude tests attempt to judge a person's ability to acquire new skills.

(Definition of acquire from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of acquire

acquire

Coordination problems abound, and their solutions are facilitated when players have the ability to quickly acquire expectations about fellow players' behavior.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

When this occurs, the debate is no longer purely scientific, but acquires an "ideological" facet.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The share it acquired depended on the daughters' present circumstances, on whether they were unmarried, married, or returned from marriage as a widow or divorcée.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

So, such representations could only be acquired as identical (' homophonous ').

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Nevertheless, we consider them here for their insight into systems that acquire representations appropriate for a cognitive domain through a learning process.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Then, through the paths of the digraph representing the design problem decomposition, the dependent descriptor will eventually acquire its value.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In the present work we wanted to verify whether oocytes recovered from preantral follicles were able to acquire calcium activity during follicle culture.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

And we can consider possible roles for computers in helping students acquire these necessary skills.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Other representations concerned with technical, cognitive and musical skills may be acquired concurrently.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In general, lower frequency words will tend to be encountered and acquired (and are also taught) later than higher frequency words.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

For example, if the claimant suffered no loss, must wrongfully acquired gains be disbursed?

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The degree of critical awareness that we believe intelligent international actors should acquire might appear to be a tall order.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In view of this, we could expect the subject gerunds to be the first to acquire the verbal traits characteristic of the participle.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Pollinaria are natural markers of insect visits to orchids, as there are no other obvious means by which they would be acquired by insects.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Second, the first locally born generation did acquire their parents' languages, which were in wide use through the 1920s.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of acquire?

Translations of acquire

in Chinese (Traditional)

取得，獲得, 購得, 學到…

Meaning of acquire in English

Idiom

acquire | American Dictionary

acquire | Business English

Examples of acquire

Translations of acquire

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