Familiar with means knowing something or having experience with it: I'm familiar with Excel means you know how to work in Excel. People use it for software, rules, topics and places they know from experience. Get familiar with means to get to know something and find your way around it.
Want to remember familiar with?
Write a sentence — we'll show the mistakes right away and suggest how to say it more naturally.
The check is taking longer than usual. Your feedback will appear here automatically.
be/get familiar with + noun/-ing; not familiar with + noun; something + be familiar to + person
- Before the trip, I got familiar with the metro map so I wouldn't get lost.
- The new manager isn't familiar with our reporting software yet, so I'll show her how it works.
- By the second year, most students are familiar with basic statistics.
What changed
First versionAre you familiar to our online booking system?
RevisionAre you familiar with our online booking system?
Familiar to looks at it from the other side: first you name what seems familiar, then the person after to: This name is familiar to me. If the sentence starts with the person who knows something, you need with. So to was replaced with with.
Familiar with isn't usually used for knowing people. To say you know someone, use I know Anna or We've met: I know Anna, we went to school together. Keep familiar with for knowledge and skills: familiar with the rules.
Your turn
Before you start work in the lab, you need to get ___ our safety rules.
Show the answer
familiar with — Get familiar with means to get to know something: a newcomer is learning the rules, so with. Familiar to needs to be followed by the person something is familiar to, but here the gap is followed by the rules.
Imagine you're writing a cover letter. Name a program or skill you know and say where you've used it.
I am familiar with Photoshop, which I used to design posters for our university theatre club.
Learn to use new words without mistakes
Write phrases with the words you are learning. LetsWords shows mistakes in usage and grammar, suggests corrections and explains them, and review helps the words stick.