acquire
Americanverb (used with object)
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acquires,
present (3rd person singular)
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acquired,
past participle, past
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acquiring
present participle
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to come into possession or ownership of; get as one's own.
to acquire property.
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to gain for oneself through one's actions or efforts.
to acquire learning.
- Synonyms:
- appropriate, attain, earn, win
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Linguistics. to achieve native or nativelike command of (a language or a linguistic rule or element).
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Military. to locate and track (a moving target) with a detector, as radar.
verb
Usage
What does acquire mean? Acquire most commonly means to get, buy, or learn. Acquire has a lot of meanings that vary with context. Most of them refer to the act of getting something permanently. It has more specific meanings in linguistics and in the context of the military. It’s easy to misspell acquire as aquire, so don’t forget the c. Example: When the merger is complete, our company will have acquired its largest competitor.
Synonym Usage
See get.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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acquirabilitynoun
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acquirementnoun
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acquirernoun
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preacquireverb
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reacquireverb (used with object)
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acquirableadjective
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self-acquiredadjective
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unacquirableadjective
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unacquiredadjective
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well-acquiredadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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acquiresimple
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acquiressimple
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have acquiredperfect
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has acquiredperfect
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am acquiringprogressive
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are acquiringprogressive
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is acquiringprogressive
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have been acquiringperfect progressive
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has been acquiringperfect progressive
Past
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acquiredsimple
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had acquiredperfect
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was acquiringprogressive
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were acquiringprogressive
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had been acquiringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of acquire
First recorded in 1400–50; from Latin acquīrere “to add to one's possessions, acquire” ( ac- ac- + -quīrere, combining form of quaerere “to search for, obtain”); replacing late Middle English aquere, from Middle French aquerre, from Latin, as above
Explanation
To acquire means to get or come to own something. You acquire an education by your own effort. You acquire a painting by paying for it or by someone giving it to you. You acquire a sense of calm in crisis through experience. The list of things you can acquire includes: an object, a trait, a skill, or an ability. An acquired taste is something that people usually don't like when they first experience it, but later they come to enjoy it, such as raw clams or marmite. The verb acquire was borrowed from Latin acquīrere "to add to," from the prefix ad- "at, toward" plus quaerere "to seek, get."
Vocabulary lists containing acquire
List 4
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Frindle
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Boy: Tales of Childhood
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
For “Drag Race” production designer Jen Chu, the ability to acquire raw materials in a short period of time is game-changing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2026
“You do not need to acquire all three; you can acquire any number of them, so long as each replacement property you acquire is among the identified properties.”
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 17, 2026
Diana first made its approach to acquire Genco in November, proposing a price of $20.60 a share in cash.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
More than 120,000 babies around the world acquire HIV each year.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 13, 2026
“Oh, no, Reynie, you don’t grow out of it. It’s just that once you acquire a family, you no longer need to wish for one.”
From "The Mysterious Benedict Society" by Trenton Lee Stewart
Goldman Sachs sees opportunity and acquires ETF company Neos.
From Barron's ● Aug. 15, 2026
If Paramount Skydance acquires Warner Bros., production will likely shift to the Warner Bros. lot, with Paramount leased or sold.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
Milan-based Bending Spoons, which went public recently on the Nasdaq, is a conglomerate that acquires and revamps tech businesses, such as AOL, Evernote and Vimeo.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026
The research expands on decades of work exploring how the brain acquires new abilities.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 12, 2026
I don’t refer merely to the glaring fact that the minister eventually acquires houses and Cadillacs while the faithful continue to scrub floors and drop their dimes and quarters and dollars into the plate.
From "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin
Johnson’s company had earlier acquired the insurer from Guggenheim and others.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
Walter’s group had acquired the stake only last year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
Serve was founded in 2017 as a division of Postmates and was spun out as an independent company after Uber acquired Postmates.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2026
The franchise will now hope to have acquired new fans and take momentum from their first on-field triumph, while they also pocket £275,000 in prize money.
From BBC ● Aug. 16, 2026
But as he was taken up in the universities of medieval and Renaissance Europe his works became a textbook of acquired knowledge, not a project to provoke further enquiry.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
He led a group that included another Guggenheim executive and Magic Johnson in acquiring the Dodgers for $2.15 billion in 2012.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
Saudi Arabian Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad Al Saud bought 50% of Sheffield United in 2013, before acquiring the rest of the club in 2019.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Taiwan has been boosting defence spending for years and acquiring smaller and more nimble weaponry, including drones, to enable its military to wage asymmetric warfare against China.
From Barron's ● Aug. 17, 2026
As far as acquiring know-how, he says, “just actually doing it is of much more consequence.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026
Mudgett foresaw no difficulty in acquiring the cadavers, although in fact a national shortage of corpses for medical education had by then driven doctors to raid graveyards for the freshly dead.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
