familiarize

Other forms: familiarized; familiarizing; familiarizes

To familiarize yourself with something is to learn about it or become comfortable with it. Once you familiarize yourself with the unusual spices, you'll probably find Indian food delicious.

You can familiarize yourself with the alphabet and particular sounds of a language before you start learning to speak it, and you can also familiarize a young child with the rules before her first trip to an art museum. Originally, familiarize meant "to make well-known," from familiar, from the Latin familiaris, "familiar or intimate," and the verb-forming suffix -ize.