acquire
Formsacquires, acquiring, acquired
- 1To gain something, usually through one's own effort, and come to hold it as one's own.
Through decades of careful saving, the family managed to acquire considerable wealth.
He acquired the rare manuscript at auction after years of searching for it.
Similarobtain, gain, secure, amass, procure
Note
Behind it is Latin acquirō, ad- plus quaerō, "to seek for," the root that also gives quest. The effort in this sense is therefore old: what is acquired was first sought. It sits naturally with things that become part of a person, such as a skill, decent habits and manners, a title, or riches won by hard work. The plain "get" sense carries no such striving.
- 2
- 3To become affected by a disease or illness.
Patients can acquire infections during prolonged hospital stays.
She acquired tuberculosis while working in crowded conditions.
Note
Medicine's formal counterpart to catch. Where everyday speech says someone caught or got something, clinical writing prefers acquire or contract, with the infection or disease as the direct object. A patient acquires an infection; the sentence reads as a report rather than a conversation. Of the near synonyms, contract matches it most closely in register, while catch and get belong to ordinary talk.
- 4To begin tracking a mobile target with a detector or sight, typically implying that an attack on it then becomes possible.
Like a cat fixing its gaze on a darting bird before it pounces.
The destroyer's radar can acquire several inbound missiles at once.
The gunner acquired the tank before it crossed the ridge.
Note
Military usage in the United States and Canada, where acquiring a target is the step between detecting it and being able to engage it. The subject is often the sensor or weapon itself, like a radar, a sight or a gunner, and the object is something moving, such as a missile or a tank. Outside this jargon the same sentence would suggest ownership, so context must make the military reading clear.
- 5To capture a signal by measuring it at intervals and recording the results as digital values.
The instrument can acquire temperature readings at millisecond intervals.
The system acquired thousands of samples during the test flight.
Similarcapture, record, sample
Note
Instrumentation narrows the everyday sense of coming to have: what is acquired here is a stream of measurements, captured as samples and stored as numbers. The object is usually the data itself, such as readings, samples or signals, and the verb often comes with a rate or interval attached. Nothing is owned in this sense. To acquire means to record.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English acqueren, from Old French aquerre, from Latin acquirō, which combines ad- with quaerō ("to seek for"), the same root seen in "quest."