The word ‘acquaintance’ has been done great injustice. The English language burdened a single word the great task of representing an array of relationships – with no precise definition. Few people can explain what an ‘acquaintance’ is. An acquaintance is a person too familiar to be a stranger, but too distant to be considered a friend. This paper attempts to define and shape the void the word represents. To make the matter more complex, ‘acquainted,’ ‘acquaint,’ and ‘acquaintance’ differ vastly in meaning. The different parts of our speech are too often misinterpreted. We do not delineate the boundaries of each word with any conviction, and this leads to much confusion. I aim to highlight these issues and inspire you to rethink your use of the words related to ‘acquaintance.’
The language we use grows and evolves with us. Words are created, abandoned or changed in meaning. The meaning of ‘acquaintance’ appears to be changing. Originally, the word was synonymous for friendship. [1][2] However, the meaning grew and evolved into a word that bears a unique meaning. ‘Acquaintance’ now describes the no-man’s-land left between anonymity and friendship. However, I feel that its meaning is once again shifting, and once again becoming synonymous with ‘friend,’ [3] as a result of social networking and media. Facebook, as of April 2013, has 1.11 billion users. [4] Facebook does not proactively separate ‘friends’ and ‘acquaintances’. Every time you add a user on the social networking site, they are automatically listed as a ‘friend’ on your ‘friend’s list’. One man managed to amass a ‘friend’s list’ of 200,000 ‘friends’. [5] The man who set the record rarely had over two degrees of separation between himself and any other college student in the world. He had more ‘friends’ than the population of many small countries, including Guam and Samoa. He had never talked to over 99.99% of the ‘friends’ on his his ‘friend’s list’.
Friendship and acquaintanceship are more complex relationships than a single click of a button. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘acquaintance’ as a noun meaning “slight knowledge of or friendship with someone,” and also as “the state of knowing someone slightly, without the depth or intimacy of a friendship.” [6] In other words, an acquaintances are people to whom you can say ‘Hi,’ or with whom to make small-talk, occasionally – and maybe to see in a group setting. We do not let our guard down around our acquaintances.We do not normally share secrets with an acquaintance. An acquaintances are most commonly that ‘friend-of-a-friend,’ the cute girl in your class with whom you might be friendly, but to whom you haven’t talked outside of class. After you share intimate details about your past or present with a stranger, they become an acquaintance, and can even continue to become your friend. Is acquaintanceship a required prerequisite for friendship? Before someone becomes your friend, is it necessary to first be acquaintances?
It is acceptable to believe in love at first sight; but peculiar to believe in friendship at first sight. The nature of friendship and acquaintanceship is highly subjective. Some people claim that there are no strangers – but instead, friends they haven’t met. Perhaps two such people instantly friends since their minds are both of the same disposition. However, for most people, acquaintanceship isa necessary step between ‘stranger’ and ‘friend’ – however brief that intermediate step may be. ‘Acquaintanceship’ is the name of relationship between two people after the first exchange of names and smiles till the formation of the bond of friendship. ‘Friendship’ is therefore the point on the continuum at which one ceases to be an acquaintance.
There are, however, other ways in which a person can cease to remain an acquaintance. A person may rise to the level of friendship, but can also drop down becoming a stranger once again. Acquaintances can be forgotten. When no recollection remains of a person’s name or the stories and time spent with him, then that person becomes identical to the billions of other faceless, nameless people with whom one will never come into contact in the first place. The word ‘acquaintance’ defines the void between ‘stranger’ and ‘friend’.
The void’s boundaries are not always clear, since the words ‘stranger’ and ‘friend’ describe vastly different relationships, based on the context in which they are used. It is possible to have a friend whose body you have never touched, face you have never seen, and voice you have never heard. You do not need to have physically met an acquaintance or a friend.You need not know what he looks like, or hear his voice. Acquaintanceship is the preliminary connection of two minds (minds, because the body is not required). There is no need for physical presence when words and thoughts alone can connect two people. When two minds have slight knowledge of each other, those minds become acquainted with one another. When one mind has knowledge of another – the second completely oblivious to the first – then the first mind is acquainted with the second, but to the second, the first remains a stranger. Within this distinction, it is possible to have virtual acquaintances one has never seen in person – but impossible to claim celebrities and random strangers (who you have essentially stalked) as your acquaintances.
Virtual worlds are almost real places for a lot of people. The Internet allows people to connect and interact in unique ways. In almost any given MMORPG, [7] most people tend to know the names of the best players of the game they are playing – people have heard about their stories and perhaps, through websites like YouTube, even watched some conquests of these ‘great’ players. Upon gaining such “slight knowledge” of these players – they meet the Oxford English Dictionary’s criteria for acquaintanceship. An online-acquaintance; whose name you know, whose stories you’ve heard, but have never met, is no different to you than the girl sitting five tables down that your best friend has spent the last hour telling you about.
There is a difference between ‘an acquaintance’ and ‘someone that you are acquainted with.’ It is absurd to claim that President Obama, Cleopatra and Muhammad Ali are your acquaintances after spending a few minutes on Wikipedia. I know a fair deal about Adam Levine. I saw his dramatic rise to fame with Maroon 5, and I read about his rocky relationships with Victoria’s Secret models Behati Prinsloo and Anne V. I know that Behatiwas born in South-West Africa, and that her father is a minister and her mother runs a bed and breakfast. I know that Anne V’s real last name is Vyalitsyna and that she completed the New York City Marathon and volunteered to guide a disabled athlete through the race while she tweeted about it in real-time. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of either of them. However, I do have a slight knowledge of them. I do know what all three of them look like. Neither of these celebrities have the slightest idea who I am.
The word ‘acquaintance,’ and other words related to it, are being done great injustice. The boundaries of their definitions are obfuscated to a point they have become almost interchangeable. Words are constantly becoming extinct. This seems to happen to those words that are unimportant, or that define a rare occurrence, or to words with many synonyms. Correct usage of the word is waning, even though there is a definite, unique place for the word ‘acquaintance’ in the English language, as there is no adequate substitute that is capable of filling the semantic void between ‘stranger’ and ‘friend.’ Every person has acquaintances, and it is a word that is useful to every person. Furthermore, an acquaintance can be of sovereign importance to a person’s life. It is possible for a mere acquaintance to drastically change a person’s life. Take, for instance, the 1994 movie Forrest Gump. [8] Throughout his life, Forrest makes many acquaintances. However, he has a huge impact on the lives of many of the people he meets briefly. For example, Forrest has a short meeting with Elvis Presley in which he teaches Elvis how to dance with a pelvic thrust. Soon, this becomes one of Elvis’ signature dances, and is thereafterincorporated into popular awareness of the icon himself. Forrest also meets his friend Bubba’s family. In a brief meeting, Forrest gives a huge sum of money to Bubba’s humble family, irrevocably changing the future of them all. Forrest’s brief encounters with people who were almost strangers were sometimes life-changing. You too may have changed the course of an acquaintance’s life, having a greater impact on him that many of his closest friends.
For these reasons, I believe Oxford English Dictionary’s definition for the word ‘acquaintance’ to be flawed. I agree that ‘acquaintance’ is “a state of knowing someone slightly, without the depth or intimacy of a friendship,” but OED’s definition is vague. One can get to “know someone slightly” by spending several minutes on the Internet. The objects of your perusals of the World Wide Web are not your acquaintances. You are simply acquainted with them. If two people are acquaintances, the “slight knowledge” must be reciprocal. But, if you are acquainted with someone, the relationship is one-sided. Only one of the involved parties has “slight knowledge” of the other. The OED’s definition of the word ‘acquaintance’ should reflect that you and another person must have slight knowledge of each other; if one or both of parties deem the relationship not intimate enough to be a friendship, they are simply acquaintances. In addition to solving the problem created by people that believe everyone is a friend, this new distinction between the words ‘acquaintance’ and “acquainted’ also accurately defines the nature of our relationships with certain famous personas. With a better definition of the word, it may not become useless.
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1 “acquaintance, n.”. OED Online. March 2013. Oxford University Press. 6 May 2013.
2 Davies, Mark. “Corpus of Historical American English (COHA).” Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). Bringham Young University, 2010. Web. 06 May 2013.
3 Davies, Mark. “Corpus of Historical American English (COHA).” Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). Bringham Young University, 2010. Web. 06 May 2013.
4 Smith, Craig. “By The Numbers: 32 Amazing Facebook Stats.” Digital Marketing Ramblings. 1 May 2013. Web. 06 May 2013.
5 Hofstetter, Steve. “Thinking Man: Steve Hofstetter Is Your Friend.”CollegeHumor. 14 Nov. 2005. Web. 06 May 2013.
6 “acquaintance, n.”. OED Online. March 2013. Oxford University Press. 6 May 2013.
7 Massively Multiplayer Online Game – an online role-playing video game in which a verylarge number of people participate simultaneously.
8 Forrest Gump. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. By Eric Roth. Perf. Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Sally Field, and Mykelti Williamson. Paramount Pictures, 1994.
