acquisition
Pluralacquisitions (some meanings)
- 1The act or process of gaining or coming to possess something.
The acquisition of wealth was the driving goal of his career.
Skill acquisition speeds up when learners get regular feedback.
Similarattainment, gaining, procurement
Oppositeloss
Note
The action noun behind the verb acquire, built the Latin way: Old French acquisicion, from Latin acquisītiō, from acquirere, with -ition marking an act. It usually takes an of-phrase naming what is gained (the acquisition of equipment), or it follows a noun, as in skill acquisition. It can be countable or uncountable. Once the act is complete, the same word can name its result, which is the thing acquired.
- 2Something that has been gained or obtained; a valuable addition.
The gallery's latest acquisition is a striking modern sculpture.
Among the club's recent acquisitions was a promising young goalkeeper.
Similarpurchase, addition, buy, signing
Note
Here the word names the result rather than the act, and it is usually countable: a gallery or a club has its acquisitions. It often carries approval. Quite an acquisition praises the thing as a worthwhile gain, not merely as something obtained, and the phrase is the natural way to admire a new possession.
- 3The process of sampling signals that measure real-world physical conditions and converting them into digital numeric values a computer can manipulate.
The engineers configured the acquisition system to record temperature and pressure at once.
During the flight test, data acquisition captured signals from dozens of sensors.
Note
An engineer's sense, at home in compounds such as data acquisition and acquisition system. Sensors report continuous conditions like temperature or pressure, and acquisition is the stage that samples them and turns them into numbers. It is the step before analysis, not the analysis itself. Unlike the everyday act of gaining, nothing here is owned. The word means capturing a measurement.
Practice
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Origin
This word came into Middle English via Old French acquisicion, from Latin acquisītiō, based on the verb acquirere. It is equivalent to "acquire" plus "-ition."