Idioms: Acquaintance - a passing/nodding a. (1)

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Idiom(s) of the day: A PASSING ACQUAINTANCE/NODDING ACQUANTANCE (1)

My Russian-to-English category: Общение и отношения (Communication and relationships)

Explanation(s):

Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms, 2004 (CCDI):

If you have a passing acquaintance or a nodding acquaintance with someone, you know them slightly. You can also say that someone is a passing acquaintance or a nodding acquaintance.

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

superficial acquaintance (for nodding acquaintance)

Translation(s):

CCDI:

Шапочное знакомство.

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

случайная встреча, случайное знакомство (for passing acquaintance)

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

Multitran (www.multitran.ru):

Multilex (www.multilex.ru):

Шапочное знакомство (for nodding acquaintance).

Examples:

CCDI:

And of course, he can now claim—after his first summit as head of government—more than a nodding acquaintance with his fellow leaders.

After a while a man came in who was evidently a passing acquaintance of the family and stopped at their table to chat.

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

a man with whom I had a passing acquaintance

British National Corpus (BNC), Mark Davies (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/):

passing acquaintance:

1 FYW W_non_ac_soc_science He never found work, made no male friends and had only a passing acquaintance with people in a local pub, including the 20-year-old barmaid. He began to

2 AP0 W_biography viewers for having to watch it). Dennis Hopper, then a mere passing acquaintance of Nicholson's had, in comparison, made it big at nineteen, appearing

nodding acquaintance:

1 FY8 S_interview_oral_history from the f from the flats or not? Erm yeah, we had a nodding acquaintance with quite a few of them, and I think they were aware

2 GVL W_fict_prose were Daine in disguise? Back in the world, I had barely had a nodding acquaintance with the girl. I couldn't be expected to tell now whether she

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