Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Acquaintance with or knowledge of something.
  • noun The quality of being known from past experience.
  • noun Established friendship or intimacy.
  • noun Improper or unduly intimate friendliness; forwardness.
  • noun An act characterized by forwardness.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of being familiar, in any sense of that word; intimate knowledge; close or habitual acquaintance; free or unrestrained intercourse: followed by with before an object.
  • noun An unusual liberty in act or speech from one person toward another; a freedom of conduct justified only by the most intimate relations, or exercised without warrant; an act of personal license, in either a good or a bad sense: most frequently in the plural: as, the familiarities of intimate friendship; his familiarities were repulsive.
  • noun In astrol., any kind of aspect or reception.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The state of being familiar; intimate and frequent converse, or association; unconstrained intercourse; freedom from ceremony and constraint; intimacy.
  • noun Anything said or done by one person to another unceremoniously and without constraint; esp., in the pl., such actions and words as propriety and courtesy do not warrant; liberties.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state of being extremely friendly; intimacy.
  • noun Undue intimacy; inappropriate informality, impertinence.
  • noun An instance of familiar behaviour.
  • noun Close or habitual acquaintance with someone or something; understanding or recognition acquired from experience.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun close or warm friendship
  • noun personal knowledge or information about someone or something
  • noun a casual manner
  • noun an act of undue intimacy
  • noun usualness by virtue of being familiar or well known

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French familiarité, from Latin familiāritātem.

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