Acquire

How to spell acquire

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce acquire

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does acquire mean?

1. verbTo come to own or gain possession of something, often through effort, purchase, or study.

Acquire in a sentence

• The firm hopes to acquire a smaller competitor by the end of the year.

• It takes years of practice to acquire that level of skill.

Where does acquire come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin acquirere, meaning 'to get in addition' or 'to gain', formed from the prefix ad- 'to, toward' and quaerere 'to seek or to obtain'. As the prefix attached, the 'd' assimilated into the 'c' sound, giving the ac- spelling that survives today. English took the word in through Old French acquerre and the related learned forms in the late Middle Ages, around the fifteenth century, when writers consciously reshaped it to mirror the original Latin spelling with its 'cq'. That same quaerere root sits inside a whole family of familiar words, including 'inquire', 'require', and 'question', all of them carrying the underlying idea of seeking. The classic spelling trap is precisely that silent, almost invisible 'c' before the 'q': the word is pronounced as if it began 'a-quire', so writers regularly drop the 'c' and the 'd'-turned-'c' that history left behind.

How the word is built

• ac- (variant of ad-: to, toward)
• quire (from quaerere: to seek, to obtain)