familiar stranger
English
Etymology
Coined by American social psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1972.
Noun
familiar stranger (plural familiar strangers)
- (social psychology) A stranger who is nonetheless recognized by another from regularly sharing a common physical space such as a street or bus stop, but with whom one does not interact.
- 2018, Davide Spallazzo; Ilaria Mariani, Location-Based Mobile Games: Design Perspectives, Springer, →ISBN, page 39:
- The familiar stranger is someone we meet every morning at the bus stop or at the campus, but we have never talked with.
Further reading
- familiar stranger on Wikipedia.Wikipedia