familiarity
Americannoun
-
familiarities
plural
-
thorough knowledge or mastery of a thing, subject, etc.
-
the state of being familiar; friendly relationship; close acquaintance; intimacy.
-
an absence of ceremony and formality; informality.
- Synonyms:
- unconstraint
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freedom of behavior justified only by the closest relationship; undue intimacy.
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Often familiarities. an instance of such freedom, as in action or speech.
-
a sexual liberty or impropriety.
noun
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reasonable knowledge or acquaintance, as with a subject or place
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close acquaintanceship or intimacy
-
undue intimacy
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(sometimes plural) an instance of unwarranted intimacy
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of familiarity
1350–1400; Middle English familiarite (< Anglo-French ) < Latin familiāritās intimacy. See familiar, -ity
Explanation
Familiarity is the state of knowing something very well. It's also a casual way of behaving. Your familiarity with your best friend means that you can say whatever you want around her. Familiarity is from the Latin word familiaritatem for "intimacy, friendship.” Familiarity is used in situations that people know well. A painter has a familiarity with brushes and canvas. When there’s familiarity with a task, people aren’t stressed, because they’ve done it before. This word also refers to a casual way of acting: if you hug someone, it shows familiarity. That kind of familiarity is the opposite of aloofness and formality.
Vocabulary lists containing familiarity
The Color of My Words
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Elijah of Buxton
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A Heart in a Body in the World
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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:
Jenner-Fust said the homeowners were "quite surprised" by the discovery, who had been "blinded by familiarity" after seven decades.
From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026
He has some familiarity with his teammates and coaches after being at spring training the last two years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2026
While many doctors don’t have the time or familiarity with prior-authorization appeals to help patients, patient advocates say physicians or their office staff are a crucial part of the process.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026
This kind of familiarity is one of the pleasures of becoming a regular somewhere: over time, without really deciding to, two people accumulate small pieces of information about each other.
From Salon ● Aug. 20, 2026
A deserted golf course stretched away toward a few hilly clumps of trees, and I felt the whole desolate familiarity of the scene—the country club and the dance and the lawn with its single cricket.
From "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
It is not, mercifully, a reboot of the original and iconic series starring Andy Griffith, but fans of that “Matlock” will find tonal familiarities in this one.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2024
The courts in the early British colonies of Connecticut and New Haven ultimately indicted at least 34 women and men for the crimes of witchcraft and familiarities with the devil.
From Washington Times ● May 26, 2023
Yet in “Jobe’z World” many of the departures from daily familiarities are minor, fussy, and stepwise rather than daringly disjunctive.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 11, 2019
None of these episodes are bad, but they lack the magic trick that is St. Aubyn’s prose, replacing the books’ singular mix of high style and bleak substance with the energetic familiarities of genre.
From Slate ● May 10, 2018
Colors weren’t true either, but rather a vague assortment of shaded pastels that indicated not so much color as faded familiarities.
From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
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.
