Definition of "acquaintance"

Contract no friendſhip, or even acquaintance, with a guileful man : he reſembles a coal, which when hot burneth the hand, and when cold blacketh it.

1799, “Hito'pade'sa”, in William Jones, transl., The Works, volume 6, page 22

Montgomery was an old acquaintance of Ferguson.

1848, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XVI, in The History Of England From the Accession of James II

Having therefore conſulted with my Wife, and ſome of my Acquaintance, I determined to go again to Sea.

1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “The Author Gives Some Account of Himself and Family, His First Inducements to Travel. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], part I (A Voyage to Lilliput), page 3

Their mother […] was busy in the mean time in keeping up her connections, as she termed a numerous acquaintance, lest her girls should want a proper introduction into the great world.

1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: […] Peter Edes for Thomas and Andrews, […], published 1792

The words of these songs were either without meaning, or derived from an idiom with which Watt, a very fair linguist, had no acquaintance.

1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, Olympia Press