bowing acquaintance

We had as yet only acquired a bowing acquaintance with it, through pleasure excursions to Scutari and the regions round about.

A bowing acquaintance.

He enjoys them immensely, but does not cultivate as large a number of them as does the Thoracic, nor have as many "bowing acquaintances" as the Alimentive.

He growled, but he was not a dog of hasty disposition, and before proceeding to extreme measures he sniffed the Chief Inspector's hand, and realized that here was, if not a friend, at least a bowing acquaintance.

I had a bowing acquaintance with elementary First Aid since I held a junior St. John certificate, and for the rest of the rebellion I cruised around the streets in a motor ambulance picking up casualties and taking them to hospital.

His memory has such a limitless grasp that he is able to quote sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter, from a gnarled and knotty ancient literature that ordinary scholars are capable of achieving little more than a bowing acquaintance with.

--A good many such billets-doux were addressed to Alwyn personally, and as he opened and read them he was somewhat amused to see how many who had formerly been mere bowing acquaintances were now suddenly, almost magically, transformed into apparently eager, admiring, and devoted friends.