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FAMILIARITY
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An act of undue intimacy
Synonyms:
familiarity; impropriety; indecorum; liberty
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("familiarity" is a kind of...):
misbehavior; misbehaviour; misdeed (improper or wicked or immoral behavior)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Close or warm friendship
Example:
the absence of fences created a mysterious intimacy in which no one knew privacy
Synonyms:
closeness; familiarity; intimacy
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("familiarity" is a kind of...):
friendliness (a friendly disposition)
Derivation:
familiar (having mutual interests or affections; of established friendship)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Usualness by virtue of being familiar or well known
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("familiarity" is a kind of...):
usualness (commonness by virtue of not being unusual)
Attribute:
familiar (well known or easily recognized)
unfamiliar (not known or well known)
Antonym:
unfamiliarity (unusualness as a consequence of not being well known)
Derivation:
familiar (well known or easily recognized)
familiar (within normal everyday experience; common and ordinary; not strange)
Sense 4
Meaning:
A casual manner
Synonyms:
casualness; familiarity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("familiarity" is a kind of...):
informality (a manner that does not take forms and ceremonies seriously)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "familiarity"):
slanginess (casualness in use of language)
Sense 5
Meaning:
Personal knowledge or information about someone or something
Synonyms:
acquaintance; conversance; conversancy; familiarity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Hypernyms ("familiarity" is a kind of...):
information (knowledge acquired through study or experience or instruction)
Derivation:
familiar (having mutual interests or affections; of established friendship)
familiar ((usually followed by 'with') well informed about or knowing thoroughly)
Context examples:
These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father’s dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
I approached him tenderly, for I loved even him; but he showed his whole set of teeth, got under a chair expressly to snarl, and wouldn't hear of the least familiarity.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her enthusiasm; and long before his visit concluded, they conversed with the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Far more potent were the memories of his heredity that gave things he had never seen before a seeming familiarity; the instincts (which were but the memories of his ancestors become habits) which had lapsed in later days, and still later, in him, quickened and become alive again.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
Mrs. Phillips's vulgarity was another, and perhaps a greater, tax on his forbearance; and though Mrs. Phillips, as well as her sister, stood in too much awe of him to speak with the familiarity which Bingley's good humour encouraged, yet, whenever she did speak, she must be vulgar.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
It might have been that he took no notice because he was heavy with sleep. (He had been out all night on the meat-trail, and had but just then awakened.) And his carelessness might have been due to the familiarity of the trail to the pool.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
I was not aware of it myself, but I felt it necessary to uphold the institutions of my county, and to evince a familiarity with them; so I shook my head, as much as to say, “I believe you!”
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
In every meeting of the kind Willoughby was included; and the ease and familiarity which naturally attended these parties were exactly calculated to give increasing intimacy to his acquaintance with the Dashwoods, to afford him opportunity of witnessing the excellencies of Marianne, of marking his animated admiration of her, and of receiving, in her behaviour to himself, the most pointed assurance of her affection.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
He quickly came to know much of the ways of the man-animals, but familiarity did not breed contempt. The more he came to know them, the more they vindicated their superiority, the more they displayed their mysterious powers, the greater loomed their god-likeness.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
I was going to suggest, with a modest sense of my youth and the familiarity I had been already guilty of, that I had better give him the full benefit of that name, when my aunt went on to say: But don't you call him by it, whatever you do.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
