acquisition

American  

[ak-wuh-zish-uhn] / ˌæk wəˈzɪʃ ən /

noun

1. the act of acquiring or gaining possession.

   the acquisition of real estate.

2. something acquired; addition.

   public excitement about the museum's recent acquisitions.

3. the purchase of one business enterprise by another.

   the acquisition of a rival corporation;

   mergers and acquisitions.

4. Linguistics. the act or process of achieving mastery of a language or a linguistic rule or element.

   child language acquisition; second language acquisition.

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acquisition British  

/ ˌækwɪˈzɪʃən /

noun

1. the act of acquiring or gaining possession

2. something acquired

3. a person or thing of special merit added to a group

4. astronautics the process of locating a spacecraft, satellite, etc, esp by radar, in order to gather tracking and telemetric information

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Usage

What does acquisition mean? Acquisition most commonly means the process of obtaining something or the thing that is obtained. It is a noun form of the verb acquire, which most commonly means to get, buy, or learn. Acquire and acquisition have a lot of meanings that vary with context. Most of them refer to the act of getting something permanently. Acquisition is commonly used to refer to a company that is acquired by another company. It’s especially used this way in the phrase mergers and acquisitions. It’s also used in a specific way in the context of linguistics: language acquisition is the process of becoming fluent in a language. Example: The company announced plans for the acquisition of its largest competitor, raising concerns about it becoming a monopoly.

Other Word Forms

• acquisitional
  adjective
• acquisitor
  noun
• preacquisition
  noun
• proacquisition
  adjective
• reacquisition
  noun
• superacquisition
  noun

Etymology

Origin of acquisition

First recorded in 1375–1425; Middle English adquisicioun, a(c)quisicion, from Latin acquīsītiōn-, stem of acquīsītiō, from acquīsīt(us) “acquired” (past participle of acquīrere; see acquire) + -iō -ion

Explanation

An acquisition is something you acquire — a book, a skill or if you are a mogul, a company. It describes things you have purchased, things you have learned, or things you have gotten. Acquisition has a formal sense to it. We don't talk about our new jeans as our latest acquisition, unless we are the kind of person who refers to their latest copy of Vogue as their Bible. It is very commonly used to refer to paintings purchased by museums — in fact, large museums have acquisition departments.

Example Sentences

That was largely because of the $4.5 billion acquisition of the glass packaging manufacturer Verallia Société Anonyme by BW Gestão de Investimentos, the office of Brazil’s Moreira Salles family.

From Barron's • May 23, 2026

DeepMind — established in 2010 by Hassabis and fellow technologists Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman — became the first modern artificial-general-intelligence lab, and its 2014 acquisition by Google famously galvanized the creation of OpenAI.

From MarketWatch • May 23, 2026

“If you only focus on acquiring and buying clicks, your customer acquisition cost becomes significantly higher,” he said.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 22, 2026

The supermarket chain said the affected convenience stores had been loss-making for some time and were acquired through its McColls acquisition in 2022.

From BBC • May 22, 2026

The Ptolemys devoted much of their enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa, Persia, India, Israel and other parts of the world.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

Related Words

• addition
• gain
• procurement
• purchase
• recovery