Careful Words

acquaintance (n.)

  If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another: I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merry Wives of Windsor. Act i. Sc. 1.

  But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance.

Old Testament: Psalm lv. 15.

  Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816): The Rivals. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And days o' lang syne?

Robert Burns (1759-1796): Auld Lang Syne.