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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
acquire
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
acquire/achieve/gain/develop competence
▪ First you have to acquire competence in methods of research.
acquire/assemble/amass a collectionformal
▪ The two men amassed a remarkable collection of medieval manuscripts.
acquire/assume significanceformal (= take on significance)
▪ As links with Europe continue to grow, language learning assumes even greater significance.
an acquired taste (=something that people do not like at first)
▪ This kind of tea is an acquired taste, but very refreshing.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
newly
▪ Infections newly acquired during this tail will therefore be under selection pressure.
▪ The median clearance time of newly acquired human papillomavirus was 6 months.
▪ One of his red-letter days was the time we took him for his first ride in our newly acquired Rolls-Royce.
▪ She returned to the restaurant and put her newly acquired knowledge to work.
▪ The tour also visits several conservancy preserves, including newly acquired Watson Brake Mounds, one of the oldest mound complexes known.
recently
▪ Our chauffeur, Robin, had recently acquired new ` wheels'.
▪ My wife Kay recently acquired a disabled sticker for our car, and we found provision for disabled passengers greatly improved.
▪ Robinson tinkered with his lines, breaking up the Wayne Gretzky and recently acquired Kevin Stevens combination after three games.
▪ New fish may be a hybrid I recently acquired a Red Parrot fish.
Recently acquired 70 new buses equipped with front-end bike racks that can accommodate two bikes.
■ NOUN
asset
▪ She would also be acquiring a capital asset.
▪ The waste-management company also entered into a pact to acquire other Wastemasters assets for about $ 15. 8 million.
▪ Indeed, Fleet was eager to liquidate the preferred shares, because they legally precluded it from integrating those newly acquired assets.
▪ Whether a company acquires an asset through loan or leasing, it is committed to making future cash payments.
▪ With the help of the Greyhound Bank it acquired Dan Air assets but grew quickly as its order book grew.
▪ Mr Pinault acquired an asset that subsequently produced lots of much-needed cash.
▪ Emap will acquire nominal net assets.
business
▪ Mr Wilbraham acquired five businesses within 15 months.
▪ It has been criticized by analysts for veering off that course and acquiring too many other businesses too quickly.
▪ Analysts are divided over whether Fore and the other expensively acquired businesses will ever make a decent return for shareholders.
▪ The directors in that case had decided that the company should acquire a brokerage business for a substantial sum.
▪ We have steadily acquired businesses since then.
▪ Warranties to be limited to events occurring after the Vendor acquired the Business.
▪ McKinsey rarely acquires other businesses, preferring to grow organically.
▪ Firstly, over the past few years, it has acquired various software businesses with related but incompatible products.
child
▪ From parents, children can acquire habits and tastes that are peculiar if not exclusive to a particular class.
▪ They were beginning to achieve astonishing economic success; and only their children would acquire a certain polish.
▪ It is hardly surprising that many children eventually acquire a similar attitude towards the relevance of mathematics.
▪ As children acquire the pidgin, they use it with playmates and other children in their peer group.
▪ Piaget suggested that behavior becomes intelligent when the child acquires the ability to solve new problems.
▪ Furthermore they are exceptionally ambitious in the language, skill and concepts they expect young children to acquire.
▪ Through learning, children acquire not only their parents' moral code but also a willingness to act in accordance with the rules.
company
▪ The third is for companies to acquire software for profiling, cross-analysing and clustering the census variables against their own customer records.
▪ Among the most debated changes is one that would affect minority shareholder rights when a company is acquired.
▪ Whether a company acquires an asset through loan or leasing, it is committed to making future cash payments.
▪ Larger companies in the industry acquired smaller companies, while the overall market demand for propane remained relatively stable.
▪ This can be done, for example, if the company acquires a source of income, such as opening a bank deposit account.
▪ Gensia and companies it has acquired lost $ 45. 8 million last year on sales of $ 58. 3 million.
▪ Labour today is rather like a car company whose models have acquired a reputation for unreliability.
▪ The new company also acquired five franchised units and raised more than $ 12 million for working capital.
corp
▪ The company got Notes last year by acquiring Lotus Development Corp.
▪ Milken served as an informal adviser to Ellison when he considered acquiring Apple Computer Corp. in 1994.
information
▪ Given the costs to the individual voter of acquiring this kind of information, it is not surprising that intermediaries have emerged.
▪ How do the cells acquire positional information?
▪ My first task was trying to acquire some reliable information about the nomads.
▪ Virtually everyone who works for an enterprise from time to time will acquire information from the environment of potential value to its operations.
▪ If you can acquire this information through a personal interview or contact, by all means do so.
▪ Large multinational corporations produce and acquire vast volumes of information in the course of their business.
▪ Specifically, under rapidly changing market conditions, acquired information is time-critical and tends to have a shorter lifetime.
interest
▪ I mention Husserl because I think that it may have been via Husserl that Wittgenstein acquired his own interest in intentionality.
▪ Host Marriott Corp. said it will pay $ 112. 5 million to acquire controlling interest in five hotels.
▪ In exchange, Union Jack will acquire a 3.5 percent interest in the Claymore field from Texaco.
▪ He acquired a lasting scientific interest in mucus, possibly augmented by digestive problems of his own.
▪ No existing trading company may acquire an interest exceeding 10 percent in another security trading company.
▪ Roebuck acquiring a two-thirds interest in Watt's patent for his financial help.
▪ The beneficiaries will acquire an equitable interest and, therefore, an equitable lease. 2.
knowledge
▪ For example, how can such a vast quantity of knowledge be acquired?
▪ Physical, logical-mathematical, and social knowledge are not acquired directly but are constructed by the individual.
▪ This issue is important because of the complex nature of such frauds, meaning that proof of actual knowledge is hard to acquire.
▪ Genetic epistemology is the science of how knowledge is acquired.
▪ The distinction between rationalism and empiricism relates to a distinction between knowledge acquired by reason and knowledge acquired by the senses.
▪ But for Aristotle and his followers, the belief held that the only knowledge we can acquire originates in sense-perceptions.
▪ The autonomous learner lacking particular knowledge knows how to acquire that knowledge.
land
▪ He had already acquired some ex-episcopal lands back in 1647-8, in settlement of earlier debts owing to him on the public faith.
▪ Deputy City Manager Bruce Herring said the city is negotiating to acquire land for those two sites.
▪ Quite apart from acquiring the land, he had been charged with getting hold of large quantities of uranium.
▪ It was to enable the government to acquire land sold during the depression to pay off debts.
▪ Joint-venture companies are specifically entitled to acquire land necessary for their own business.
▪ As he acquired further land and office in the north, the affinity inevitably widened.
▪ But all parties agree that Mr Mugabe must follow the laws of his own country in acquiring the land.
opportunity
▪ These shears are not generally available to the public, so take this opportunity to acquire a pair now.
▪ Industrial visits and other opportunities to acquire appropriate experience form part of the course.
▪ She or he would have to spend a year in general practice to have the opportunity to acquire similar skills.
▪ And the opportunities to acquire it are infinite, for power is not limited.
▪ Both should receive official sanction and both require in-service training opportunities to acquire the necessary skills.
▪ It seems I have been presented with an excellent opportunity to acquire merit by serving a holy man in charity.
▪ Employees should be given every opportunity to acquire a stake in the business for which they work.
person
▪ It is no doubt valuable to create an environment in which a person acquires effective behavior rapidly and continues to behave effectively.
▪ A person can acquire the virus from one method and pass it on through another.
▪ Or, of course, it might simply be a habit the person has acquired that has no particular significance.
▪ Essentially, it meant that each person should acquire the self-knowledge concerning when and how he or she learned best.
▪ Without help a person acquires very little moral or ethical behavior under either natural or social contingencies.
▪ That is, did the person acquiring the subject-matter think that he was obtaining hardware or software?
▪ Such voluntary transfers of possession are called bailment, and the person who so acquires possession is a bailee of the goods.
power
▪ On nationalisation, the divisions had acquired around 300 power stations, initially grouping them for management at an intermediate level.
▪ But no sooner had a man acquired a little power than the tyrant in him emerged.
▪ In April local councils acquired an important new power.
▪ I had the feeling that she had suddenly acquired the powers of a clairvoyant.
▪ Nobody inside the movement was permitted to acquire enough power or a high enough profile to challenge de Gaulle successfully.
▪ But his athletic prowess dovetailed with his particular experiences, and his body, for him, acquired almost magical power.
▪ It may be that the old pictographic signs acquired a special magic power associated with the remote past.
▪ In primitive thought and custom, one acquires the powers or characteristics of what one eats.
property
▪ In 1706 Lord Chesterfield acquired the property and demolished the original house.
▪ He had also acquired rights to a property with the intriguing title Shadow on the Sun.
▪ Rights were acquired in literary properties that would never be filmed.
▪ Corporations involved in the escalating race to acquire media properties seek not only expanded profitability but also increasing influence.
▪ Gradually the pairing of this warning to time out leads to the warning itself acquiring some punishing properties.
▪ But some symbols acquire their additional semantic properties from some characteristic they have as actions or things.
▪ Under the first, a sale agreement, the Prudential agreed to acquire a freehold property.
▪ The National Trust acquired this unusual property in 1951, but few records were kept of the garden's early management.
reputation
▪ Mr Customer Smith did however acquire a dubious reputation for dealing in prize goods.
▪ Before long, the firm acquired a reputation as a top provider of programming and debugging services.
▪ How was it, then, that Masailand acquired its reputation for corrupting those sent to rule over it?
▪ The elaborately staged conferences have acquired a reputation for issuing high-sounding communiques urging remedial economic or monetary action.
▪ Transcendental Meditation has never acquired the reputation of a sinister cult, but doubts are sometimes voiced about it.
▪ People will acquire reputations on how well-trained their computers are and how well-groomed their computational ecology is.
▪ We have acquired a reputation as the dumping ground with lightning speed.
skill
▪ This may include identifying additional skills you need to acquire.
▪ This gives new workers time to develop their skills and acquire some clients.
▪ We tend to expect pupils to find words in dictionaries, because we assume it is a skill which is simply acquired.
▪ Foundation skills are acquired in the first five years of life.
▪ They also found that on their return many women were unable to utilize the skills that they had acquired before having children.
▪ Knowing when not to apply the rules is clearly an important skill to acquire.
▪ It is only with thought, practice and feedback that the necessary skills can be acquired.
stake
▪ It acquired its stake in the early 1980s, hoping eventually to acquire the tobacco group.
▪ Disney reportedly has been in talks to acquire a one-third stake in Starwave Corp. for as much as $ 100 million.
▪ Millions of voters have acquired a stake in the wider ownership of shares and homes and a voice in union affairs.
▪ Hongkong Land acquired a 14.9% stake in Trafalgar House and then attempted, but failed, to push its holding to 29.9%.
▪ Mediobanca is being forced to acquire the 10 percent stake after secretly buying that much in October.
▪ Employees should be given every opportunity to acquire a stake in the business for which they work.
▪ Buyers acquire a 50 percent stake in exchange for investing a certain amount of money in the company.
status
▪ Bezannes From no specific mention in the échelle this growth acquired premier cru status in 1985.
▪ Affirmation depends on negation: white is valued at the expense of black; youth acquires status through the devaluation of ageing.
▪ These days the practice of story-telling is so rare that it has acquired the status of an art form.
▪ You first have to acquire non-resident status.
▪ But for most retirees, acquiring unconditional non-resident status can take up to three years.
▪ During the period of the Tudor monarchs in the sixteenth century, Parliament acquired enhanced status.
▪ Some women have acquired status as heroines.
▪ But Kampuchea failed to acquire this status.
student
▪ This proved a vain hope, as the young student soon acquired a following of like-minded people.
▪ The student acquires knowledge, understanding and a range of competencies in a particular domain.
▪ This will safeguard against the student acquiring bad habits in these features of pronunciation.
▪ During the first two years, students acquire a knowledge of both general and vocationally related registers of the languages.
▪ It is misleading if it means simply that students learn how to acquire conventional encyclopaedia-like knowledge for themselves.
▪ A general module which enables the student to acquire basic skills in group music making, using instruments and/or voices.
▪ The written examinations would provide the opportunity for assessing whether the student had acquired a sufficiently analytical approach to the subject.
▪ One polytechnic has resolved that all its humanities degree students shall acquire some appreciation of computers and information technology.
taste
▪ Having acquired the taste, a service career became increasingly attractive to them.
▪ Protective poison, an acquired taste.
▪ It was too fizzy and too gassy to drink and I acquired a taste for real ale.
▪ But the Moodies, propelled by pseudo-symphonic arrangements and mysticism, always were and always will be an acquired taste.
▪ They feared that their troops might acquire a taste for such butchery and become no better than those they fought against.
▪ They are like sushi, maybe an acquired taste.
▪ However, acquiring a taste for less salt may take time in order to become used to a low-salt taste.
▪ I rarely drink in the week, and I've never acquired a taste for wine.
title
▪ The pledgee was immunized against the freight claim because of his failure to acquire full title to the goods.
▪ He went on to acquire titles and estates, becoming conte di Buttigliera and seigneur of Saint-Thomas-de-Coeur.
▪ If A then sells and delivers them to an innocent purchaser, the latter will acquire good title.
▪ Movies acquire new titles in one of two ways.
▪ However, it is always possible that the person who sold him the goods, later acquires the title to them.
▪ These attitudes have acquired their own shorthand titles.
▪ It didn't last, but at least she acquired a title.
▪ Thus some one taking only a pledge can not acquire good title by virtue of this provision.
■ VERB
agree
▪ Learning Co. agreed to be acquired for $ 606 million in cash and stock.
begin
▪ Once they began, they acquired momentum of their own, and the size of the purge made it credible.
▪ And somehow-not solely by osmosis, either-we began acquiring that degree of skill and energy and initiative of quick intelligence.
▪ Intel said it would begin to acquire all outstanding shares of Xircom within the next ten days.
▪ In fact, most began to acquire not only managerial knowledge and skills, but also managerial interests and a managerial temperament.
▪ In 1987 they began to acquire estate agencies.
▪ Balancing these tensions required finely honed knowledge and skill that the new managers had only begun to acquire.
▪ It is at this point that the nation state begins to acquire a psychological as well as a purely administrative significance.
▪ On 8 June, Caparo began to acquire Fidelity's shares.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ AC Transit recently acquired 70 new buses equipped with wheelchair lifts.
▪ In 1998 the business was acquired by a Dutch company.
▪ It took him a long time to acquire the skills he needed to become a professional artist.
▪ Many inner cities have acquired reputations for violent crime.
▪ NTN acquired the rights to broadcast game data from football games in 1987.
▪ Research helps us acquire new insight on the causes of diseases.
▪ Robinson spent $20 million to acquire the symphony hall.
▪ The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has recently acquired several paintings by Salvador Dali.
▪ The statue was acquired at great expense by the City Corporation.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He has acquired an autonomy and influence staggering even by the standards of a country where anomalies are institutionalised.
▪ Official prices were low, but you had to pay with time or bribes to actually acquire anything.
▪ Once slated for thousands of homes, the Daley Ranch was acquired by the city for $ 21 million in January.
▪ Others acquired a harder outer membrane to later become skin-like materials.
▪ They acquired a Tucson resort in 1991 and a Hyatt hotel in Houston in 1992.
▪ They acquired joint and exclusive occupation of the flat in consideration of periodical payments and they therefore acquired a tenancy jointly.
▪ What concerns them is the risk that engineered plants might acquire weedy traits and escape from cultivation.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Acquire

Acquire \Ac*quire"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Acquired; p. pr. & vb. n. Acquiring.] [L. acquirere, acquisitum; ad + quarere to seek for. In OE. was a verb aqueren, fr. the same, through OF. aquerre. See Quest..] To gain, usually by one's own exertions; to get as one's own; as, to acquire a title, riches, knowledge, skill, good or bad habits.

No virtue is acquired in an instant, but step by step.
--Barrow.

Descent is the title whereby a man, on the death of his ancestor, acquires his estate, by right of representation, as his heir at law.
--Blackstone.

Syn: To obtain; gain; attain; procure; win; earn; secure. See Obtain.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
acquire

mid-15c., acqueren, from Old French aquerre "acquire, gain, earn, procure," from Vulgar Latin *acquaerere, corresponding to Latin acquirere "to seek in addition to" (see acquisition). Reborrowed in current form from Latin c.1600. Related: Acquired; acquiring.

Wiktionary
acquire

vb. 1 (context transitive English) To get. 2 (context transitive English) To gain, usually by one's own exertions; to get as one's own, as, to acquire a title, riches, knowledge, skill, good or bad habits.

WordNet
acquire
  1. v. come into the possession of something concrete or abstract; "She got a lot of paintings from her uncle"; "They acquired a new pet"; "Get your results the next day"; "Get permission to take a few days off from work" [syn: get]

  2. take on a certain form, attribute, or aspect; "His voice took on a sad tone"; "The story took a new turn"; "he adopted an air of superiority"; "She assumed strange manners"; "The gods assume human or animal form in these fables" [syn: assume, adopt, take on, take]

  3. come to have or undergo a change of (physical features and attributes); "He grew a beard"; "The patient developed abdominal pains"; "I got funny spots all over my body"; "Well-developed breasts" [syn: grow, develop, produce, get]

  4. locate (a moving entity) by means of a tracking system such as radar

  5. win something through one's efforts; "I acquired a passing knowledge of Chinese"; "Gain an understanding of international finance" [syn: win, gain] [ant: lose]

  6. acquire or gain knowledge or skills; "She learned dancing from her sister"; "I learned Sanskrit"; "Children acquire language at an amazing rate" [syn: learn, larn]

  7. gain through experience; "I acquired a strong aversion to television"; "Children must develop a sense of right and wrong"; "Dave developed leadership qualities in his new position"; "develop a passion for painting" [syn: develop, evolve]

Wikipedia
Acquire

Acquire is a board game designed by Sid Sackson. The game was originally published in 1962 by 3M as a part of their bookshelf games series. In most versions, the theme of the game is investing in hotel chains. In the 1990s Hasbro edition, the hotel chains were replaced by generic corporations, though the actual gameplay was unchanged. The game is currently published by Hasbro under the Avalon Hill brand, and the companies are once again hotel chains.

The object of the game is to earn the most money by developing and merging hotel chains. When a chain in which a player owns stock is acquired by a larger chain, players earn money based on the size of the acquired chain. At the end of the game, all players liquidate their stock in order to determine which player has the most money.

Acquire (company)

is a video game developer based in Japan, mainly known for their Tenchu and Way of the Samurai series.

Usage examples of "acquire".

They abjured the implicit reverence which the pride of Rome had exacted from their ignorance, while they acquired the knowledge and possession of those advantages by which alone she supported her declining greatness.

When the rights of nature and poverty were thus secured, it seemed reasonable, that a stranger, or a distant relation, who acquired an unexpected accession of fortune, should cheerfully resign a twentieth part of it, for the benefit of the state.

Distracted with the care, not of acquiring, but of preserving an empire, oppressed with age and infirmities, careless of fame, and satiated with power, all his prospects of life were closed.

Christians either desirous or capable of acquiring, to any considerable degree, the encumbrance of landed property.

East was bestowed, by the same influence, on Sabinian, a wealthy and subtle veteran, who had attained the infirmities, without acquiring the experience, of age.

The perpetual resort of pilgrims and spectators insensibly formed, in the neighborhood of the temple, the stately and populous village of Daphne, which emulated the splendor, without acquiring the title, of a provincial city.

In the pride of victory, he forfeited what yet remained of his civil virtues, without acquiring the fame of military prowess.

Besides acquiring by arms such a noble territory in France, besides defending it against continual attempts of the French monarch and all its neighbors, besides exerting many acts of vigor under their present sovereign, they had, about this very time, revived their ancient fame, by the most hazardous exploits, and the moat wonderful successes, in the other extremity of Europe.

And though he dared not to take any steps towards his further grandeur, lest he should expose himself to the jealousy of so penetrating a prince as Henry, he still hoped that, by accumulating riches and power, and by acquiring popularity, he might in time be able to open his way to the throne.

Very good: but is it not different before and after acquiring the memory?

Intellectual-Principle which actually is the primals and is always self-present and is in its nature an Act, never by any want forced to seek, never acquiring or traversing the remote--for all such experience belongs to soul--but always self-gathered, the very Being of the collective total, not an extern creating things by the act of knowing them.

God, sex, money, acquiring a ranch and, above all, how to handle women were explained to him by the night riders.

The seven American generals had their problems, too, but each had a bevy of subalterns to solve them, while French and English businessmen encountered much difficulty in acquiring even basic necessities.

The Takemotos were obviously acquiring money, and they were looking at land.

The Volkemas now had a grasp on 960 acres, and they intended acquiring much more.