acquired
ac·quired/əˈkwaɪɹd/adjective, verb
acquired is spelled A-C-Q-U-I-R-E-D, 2 syllables: ac·quired. The wrong spelling people search most is aquired: about 720 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 2 in 10 of all searches for the word. Acquired is an adjective meaning “Developed after birth; not congenital”.
How many letters and syllables are in acquired?
| Letters | 8: A-C-Q-U-I-R-E-D |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2: ac·quired |
| In writing | 25 times per million words; the 3,612th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 2; the most searched, aquired, about 720 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell acquired?
Acquired is spelled A-C-Q-U-I-R-E-D. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for acquired in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is acquired?
Acquired appears 25 times per million words in written English, the 3,612th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce acquired?
- US /əˈkwaɪɹd/
- UK /əˈkwaɪəd/
Acquired has 2 syllables, split ac·quired in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-acquired.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with acquired?
4 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as acquired from its last stressed vowel (/aɪɹd/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
What does acquired mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Developed after birth; not congenital.
verb
- 1
simple past and past participle of acquire
For quotations using this term, see Citations:acquired.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Acquired in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense medicine: developed after birth:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.