Idioms: Acquaintance - a passing/nodding a. (2)

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Idiom(s) of the day: A PASSING ACQUAINTANCE/NODDING ACQUANTANCE (2)

My category (Russian-to-English translation): Понимание и знание (Understanding & Knowledge)

Explanation(s):

Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms, 2004 (CCDI):

If you have a passing acquaintance or a nodding acquaintance with something, you know a little about it but not very much.

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

a very slight or superficial knowledge or understanding of something

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

a slight acquaintance with a person or knowledge of a subject

Translation(s):

CCDI:

Поверхностное знакомство с чем-либо

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

Multitran (www.multitran.ru):

Multilex (www.multilex.ru):

Examples:

CCDI:

We chatted for a while about poetry, with which he showed considerably more than a nodding acquaintance.

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

had no more than a nodding acquaintance with economic theory

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

students will need a nodding acquaintance with three other languages

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) v4.0:

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

Nodding acquaintance:

1 B1P W_non_ac_humanities_arts , the British (or American) student of English local history will need a nodding acquaintance with, or at least dictionaries of, three other languages. These are the

2 CD9 W_biography Hunt, he was driving a car with which he had no more than a nodding acquaintance . The season began in January in Brazil and prior to that he had had

3 FEU W_misc of the four you have had to use. You will now have at least a nodding acquaintance with twelve reference books. If you are sensible, you will return and

Passing acquaintance:

1 AR3 W_fict_prose , I continued to find myself in surroundings with which I had at least a passing acquaintance . Now I had always supposed I had travelled very little, restricted as I

2 ASY W_non_ac_polit_law_edu a danger that a broad curriculum may be superficial, containing nothing but a passing acquaintance with a variety of different subjects, and though this danger must be constantly

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