What is the English word for somebody who is not your friend, but you’ve know them even for years. For example, this might be a neighbor or somebody from school whom you see often enough but whom but only say hi to in passing, with everybody continuing on their way.
The relation between you and this person is neutral. I mean you can have a small talk about the weather and such, like while waiting at the bus stop or something like that, but that’s all.
I’m sure everybody has had at least a couple of similar relationships in their life.
The closest I have come up with is “we know each other”, but I would like to know whether there exists some one-word term for this instead of needing to resort to four words to describe the relationship.
Best Answer
Certainly acquaintance would be my own choice, but perhaps you found something remiss with it.
You might further qualify it by saying something like casual acquaintance, incidental acquaintance, nodding acquaintance, or long-time acquaintance.
Of those, I rather like nodding acquaintance, since it implies that this is someone whom you would nod to in passing, but not pause and chatter at.