nodding acquaintance

a nodding acquaintance

A very limited knowledge of or familiarity with a given person or thing. I'll help you as best I can, but I only have a nodding acquaintance with property laws. I have a nodding acquaintance with him, but I wouldn't feel comfortable asking him to help me on this project.
See also: acquaintance, nod
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

nodding acquaintance

Superficial knowledge of someone or something, as in I have a nodding acquaintance with the company president, or She has a nodding acquaintance with that software program. This expression alludes to knowing someone just well enough to nod or bow upon meeting him or her. "Early 1800s]
See also: acquaintance, nod
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.

nodding acquaintance, a

Superficial knowledge. An early nineteenth-century term, it conjures up the era when the formal bow was a normal greeting. Thomas Hughes used it in Tom Brown at Oxford (1861): “Many with whom he had scarcely a nodding acquaintance.”
See also: nod
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • a nodding acquaintance
  • a nodding acquaintance with (someone or something)
  • acquaintance
  • nodding acquaintance, a
  • a passing acquaintance with (someone or something)
  • a passing acquaintance with someone
  • a passing acquaintance with something
  • be on nodding terms
  • be on nodding terms (with someone)
  • be on nodding terms with somebody
References in classic literature
And still I maintained no more than a nodding acquaintance with him.
Even those who have hardly had a nodding acquaintance with India-Pakistan relations gleefully grab the opportunity to pen down weighty dissertations evaluating the 'options'.
Goodman, it seems, 'would hardly claim to have more than a nodding acquaintance with the visual arts.
someone with more than a nodding acquaintance to Wimbledon.
In those days, we had only a nodding acquaintance with JJ and we were quite surprised when one day he invited us to have tea with him at a posh restaurant in those days - Ampi's.
The flamboyant former Barcelona man is an electric, bamboozling blur of neon footwork, an exciting symphony of shifting body-weight and balance, an unpredictable light-theblue-touch-paper dribbler with only limited peripheral vision, spatial awareness or anything other than a vague nodding acquaintance with tactical discipline."
The flamboyant former Barcelona man is an electric, bamboozling blur of neon footwork, an exciting symphony of shifting body-weight and balance, an unpredictable light-the-blue-touch-paper dribbler with only limited peripheral vision, spatial awareness or anything other than a vague nodding acquaintance with tactical discipline.
The first North American solo exhibition of Ernest Mancoba included four small paintings ranging in date from 1958 to 1985 (one is undated) and some twenty works on paper (many of them likewise undated, but the others are mostly from the early 1990s), giving art lovers on this side of the Atlantic at least a nodding acquaintance with an oeuvre I suspect we are going to get to know much better in coming years: The artist's work is included in this year's Documenta 14.
He has only a nodding acquaintance with the neighbors.
Anyone with a nodding acquaintance of the region's history will realize what Teguia is up to from the film's opening sequence.
As a long term resident of the Bryn-Y-Gog estate Michael had a nodding acquaintance with Bridger who had also previously lived there.
Being professionally obliged to keep a nodding acquaintance with "popular culture", I read Lady Gaga was leaping to the defence of Miley Cyrus for her "twerking".
Students are presumed to have at least a nodding acquaintance with the Fourier transform of distributions, the Sobolev embedding theorems, and the Fredholm Theorem.
Similarly, coal mining contracts were awarded to firms which had a nodding acquaintance with power, steel and cement production.
At the end of the eight-day cruise we were on first-name terms with at least 30 fellow passengers and on nodding acquaintance with perhaps 50 more.