acquaintanceship

Etymology

From acquaintance + -ship.

noun

1. (uncountable) The state of being acquainted.
   What, eschew acquaintanceship? forget, After my most hearty commendations, my very trusty friend, ’Twere sin and shame Tomaso. 1640, The Knave in Graine, New Vampt, London: John Day, act III, scene 1
   To host and hostess thus with fortune blest, Lief had I come with better news to bear Unto your greeting and acquaintanceship; 1889, “The Libation-Bearers”, in Edmund Doidge Anderson Morshead, transl., The House of Atreus, page 114
   Without effort, she took them with her into her ever widening circle of acquaintanceship, and the two Avonlea girls found their social pathway at Redmond made very easy and pleasant for them […] 1915, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 5, in Anne of the Island
   When they talked down the telephone he heard a man whom he might respect at the other end of it — a fellow who sounded willing to let bygones be bygones and passion acquaintanceship. 1971, E. M. Forster, chapter 33, in Maurice, Penguin, published 1972, page 143
2. (countable) A relationship as acquaintances.
   They began their acquaintanceship very lovingly, and after a shake or two by the hand, Bell gave him a more particular account of the uses and sanctity of his office […] 1753, George Wollaston, The Life and History of a Pilgrim, Dublin, Book 2, p. 137
   A growing distaste for the forced acquaintanceships of travel and a craving for home brought me back. 1905, William John Locke, The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne, Part 2, Chapter 21
   It was an acquaintanceship formed partly out of boredom, partly for mutual protection […] 1979, Patrick White, The Twyborn Affair, Penguin, published 1981, Part 2, pp. 133-134
   […] because she felt a strange freedom—even a security—in having decided that no acquaintanceship could end in anything untoward, she felt emboldened to sometimes do and say such things to men […] 2013, Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Part 2, Chapter 15