familiarize

Etymology

The OED takes it as probably partly borrowed from Middle French familiariser (“to render amicable or intimate”), recorded from 1551, and partly formed within English from familiar and -ize.^[2] Johnson and the Shorter Oxford give only the French source,^[3][4] and Dictionary.com only the English formation;^[5] Etymonline allows either.^[6] The French verb is formed from Latin familiāris (“familiar”) with the suffix -iser.^[2] The OED compares Spanish familiarizar (1624 or earlier), Portuguese familiarizar (1597–1693), Italian familiarizzare (1608–19) and Catalan familiatzar (1803).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Reflexively, to act in a friendly or intimate manner, especially too freely: before 1586, in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia; this sense is obsolete.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the word to 1593, in the sense of making something known through experience,^[7] and Etymonline to about 1600, "to make well known".^[6]

Semantic evolution

The verb first followed the French senses of friendliness and intimacy, which survived into the 18th century and are now obsolete or rare.^[2] The main modern sense, acquainting oneself or someone else with something, is recorded reflexively from 1593 and with a person as object from 1635;^[2][7] Etymonline dates "to make acquainted with" to the 1680s.^[6] From 1594 the verb also meant to take away the strangeness of something and make it ordinary,^[2] a sense Merriam-Webster illustrates with Johnson's remark that Shakespeare "familiarizes the wonderful".^[7] Johnson (1755) gave "to make familiar; to make easy by habitude" and "to bring down from a state of distant superiority".^[3] Other senses were to tame an animal (from 1634), now rare,^[2][4] and to give a name a familiar form (from 1711).^[2] The sense of accustoming or habituating is now archaic or rare.^[7][4]

Timeline

• before 1586 – reflexive, to behave in a friendly or too familiar way (obsolete).^[2]
• 1593 – reflexive, to acquaint oneself with something.^[2][7]
• 1594 – to make ordinary, to take away strangeness.^[2]
• 1634 – to tame an animal (now rare).^[2]
• 1635 – to make a person acquainted with something; to accustom.^[2]
• before 1639 – to make well known.^[2]
• 1711 – to give a familiar form to a name.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To make oneself or another person familiar with something, usually followed by with: New staff spend a week familiarizing themselves with the software.^[8][7][2]
2. To make something widely known or generally accepted.^[8][2]
3. To take the strangeness away from something; to make it seem ordinary.^[7][2]
4. (archaic) To accustom or habituate.^[7][4]

Word family

• familiarization
• familiarizer
• unfamiliarized
• defamiliarize

Related words

• familiar
• familiarity
• family

Usage notes

It is also spelled familiarise, especially in British English.^[7][5][8]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
4. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins