familiar

familiar 1 Familiar, intimate, close, confidential, chummy, thick are comparable when meaning near to one another because of constant or frequent association, shared interests and activities, or common sympathies, or, when applied to words or acts, indicative of such nearness.

Familiar suggests relations or manifestations characteristic of or similar to those of a family, where long-continued intercourse makes for freedom, informality, ease of address, and the taking of liberties; consequently familiar may apply to the relations, words, and acts of persons actually in such a situation and to the attitude or the style of speaking or writing of persons who assume the freedom and ease of address of those who are

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familiar essays

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time and intercourse have made us familiar— Johnson

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a simpler and more familiar speech, able to express subtleties or audacities that before seemed inexpressible— Ellis

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the familiar, if not rude, tone in which people addressed her— Hawthorne

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she was a fearless and familiar little thing, who asked disconcerting questions— Wharton

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Intimate suggests relations characteristic of those who are in close contact with one another (as through ties of blood, of friendship, or of common interests or aspirations) and who have opened their hearts or their minds to such a degree that they deeply know and understand one another

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the intimate political relation subsisting between the president of the United States and the heads of departments, necessarily renders any legal investigation of the acts of one of those high officers peculiarly . . . delicate— John Marshall

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they establish and maintain ... more intimate and confiding relations with us— J. R. Lowell

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though Farfrae must have so far forgiven him as to have no objection to . . . him as a father-inlaw, intimate they could never be— Hardy

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Intimate may also apply to a connection between a person and a thing, especially something he says, does, wears, or uses; it then implies a very close relation between that thing and his inmost thoughts or feelings or his life in the privacy of his home

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official receptions were few, but small, intimate teas were frequent in the governor's home

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the indecency of publishing intimate letters which were never written to be published— Ellis

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her eyes, lively, laughing, intimate, nearly always a little mocking— Gather

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a shirt-sleeved populace moved . . . with the intimate abandon of boarders going down the passage to the bathroom— Wharton

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As applied directly or indirectly to knowledge, intimate differs from familiar not only in idiom but also in implying not merely acquaintance but close or deep study

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he has an intimate knowledge of the situation

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he is familiar with the facts pertaining to the situation

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he is familiar with the poem in question

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he has gained, through long study, an intimate knowledge of the poem

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Close is often used in place of intimate when one wishes to imply an attachment drawing persons together in such a way as to suggest the exclusion of others or a very strong bond of affection between them

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close friends

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a close friendship

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seeing them so tender and so close— Tennyson

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too close to Theodore Roosevelt ever to receive the confidence of Woodrow Wilson— Paxson

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Confidential implies a relationship based upon mutual trust or confidence or upon a willingness to confide intimate matters (as one's hopes, thoughts, or feelings)

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the growing harmony and confidential friendship which daily manifest themselves between their Majesties— Chatham

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he slipped his arm through his father's with a confidential pressure— Wharton

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Chummy and thick are less formal terms and usually convey some degree of contempt, derision, or envy of a close association.

Chummy suggests an easy informal intimacy

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it is an unprecedented thing, I take it, for a captain to be chummy with the cook— London

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Thick stresses constant association more than the strength of the attachment

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the two former enemies are now as thick as thieves

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but often it carries a sinister suggestion

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a friend of gangsters and rumrunners, very thick with people like Jake the Barber— Bellow

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Analogous words: friendly, neighborly, *amicable: sociable, cordial, genial, affable, *gracious: easy, Comfortable, cozy, snug: intrusive, obtrusive, officious, *impertinent

Antonyms: aloof

Contrasted words: "indifferent, detached, unconcerned, incurious: formal, conventional, ceremonious, Ceremonial

2 ordinary, Common, popular, vulgar

Analogous words: *usual, wonted, accustomed, customary, habitual

Antonyms: unfamiliar: strange

Contrasted words: novel, newfangled, new-fashioned, *new: rare, uncommon, "infrequent: fantastic, chimerical (see IMAGINARY)