Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A): The phrase mergers and acquisitions gets tossed around a lot to refer to business combinations of all sorts and to the investment banking specialty of advising companies about such deals. Colloquially, the term merger is generally used to suggest the combination of two companies into one where each is of similar size. The phrase "merger of equals" is often used to emphasize this colloquialism.
The word acquisitions, in contrast, is used typically to suggest one larger company buying a smaller one.
In many of the deals I've been around, I've literally chosen to use the word merger whenever I spoke with the selling company and used the word acquisition when I was speaking to the buyer. As you can imagine, a seller typically wants to become a part of the new great whole, while the buyer's bias is to own and operate the target company as part of the acquiring company.
In contrast to the vernacular, attorneys and accountants have detailed rule books about what constitutes a merger and what makes up an acquisition. Those nuances are best left to them to explain. You may also want to read Investopedia's definition.
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