familiarity

UK/fəmɪliˈæɹɪti/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,670 of 15,258leans written

Familiarity is close knowledge of somebody or something. Familiarity with the system, a familiarity about it, familiarity breeds contempt.

It covers knowing a subject well and knowing a person too well: familiarity breeds contempt is the fixed warning about the second. Psychologists find the opposite is usually true — the mere exposure effect means people like what they have seen before. Note familiar; and that the word originally meant belonging to the household, from the Latin for family.

Definitions of familiarity

1nounfamiliarityClose knowledge of somebody or something.B2+
“His familiarity with the city's back streets made him the perfect guide.”

familiarity is close knowledge.

Where it comes from

Latin familiaritas comes from familia, a household. A familiar was a member of the household, which is where the witch's familiar comes from.

Latin
familiāritātem
Middle French
familiarité
English, today
familiarity

From Middle French familiarité, from Latin familiāritātem. Displaced native Old English hīwcūþnes. Morphologically familiar + ity.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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familiarity in the wild

Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these processes.
Experience
In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle.
Mere-exposure effect
The familiarity heuristic can be applied to various situations that individuals experience in day-to-day life.
Familiarity heuristic
In contrast, familiarity is the feeling that the event was previously experienced, without recollection.
Recognition memory
Imagining a false event increases familiarity, which may cause people to mistake this as evidence that they have experienced the event.
Imagination inflation

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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