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Is it possible to say know someone in detail in English?
In my opinion, if you have only one best friend, you can develop a deep friendship more easily. On the other hand, if you have a lot of friends, you don't have the opportunity to know them in detail.
If not, what would you suggest instead?
To "know someone in detail" is easily understood, but sounds unnatural, like it's translated from another language, and it doesn't work.
A better expression is, "know someone intimately", though that can have sexual connotations if the context isn't clear.
It is not an expression you would hear. The phrase "know in detail" would be more likely to be applied to something like a school subject or the maintenance of a car or some such. The word "detail" tends to refer to matters of fact, in particular down to the smallest fact. So to "know in detail" about car repair means you know every fact (detail) that will result in the car being correctly repaired. Things like what tool to use in a situation, or what oil to use, or how much force to apply tightening a particular fastener, or those sorts of thing.
To know a person "in detail" would thus mean to know things like hair color, shoe size, height, etc. These are not the kind of things that one thinks of in regard to a best friend. You may know these about a best friend (or not) but those are not the things that tend to make one think of somebody as their best friend.
For a best friend you might be thinking of such things as sharing some personal event of great importance. Say a graduation, a marriage, getting or losing a job, buying a house, birth of a child, death of a parent, etc. Or sharing some extended or often repeated group activity. Things like going to the bar every Friday for years, or going camping for two weeks, etc.
Depending on the context you might use several possible words instead of "in detail." Here are just a few.
There are others. Here is a link to a thesaurus web site entry for "personally." You can easily find the entry for other words and choose what makes sense in context.
From an America English speaker, I would use "know them well" instead of "know them in detail" as that gets too close to "know intimately" which in many cases conveys a sexual relationship.
Hope that this helps you to get to know others well!
Though it is an expression I have never heard used - I see no reason not to do so as its meaning is perfectly clear.
More usual would be to say that you knew the person "intimately";"very well indeed"; or "personally".
Humans are dynamic, complex, and self-interacting. They cannot be perfectly known by other humans. They cannot be perfectly known even by themselves.
The "in detail" is usually applied to subjects with details that can be fully known.
For something as ambiguous and nuanced as personhood the way to describe the best possible understanding that can be realized, or to express a level that is substantially greater than median knowledge of the person by their associates, would be found in examples like "Alas poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio." or the scene in Hunt for the Red October when Jack Ryan convinces leadership that he has a superlative understanding of Captain Ramius.
Other variations that can be valid include:
They are comparison, but it is treated as a categorical variable in its limits on inference instead of a continuous one.
