friend
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: enpr: frĕnd
ipa: /fɹɛnd/
ipa: [fɹ̥ɛnd]
ipa: [fɹ̥ɛnd̥]
note: with pin–pen merger
ipa: /frɪnd/
rhymes: -ɛnd
Forms: form: friends
form: friending
form: friended
form: friended
Etymology: From Middle English frend, freend, from Old English frēond (“friend”, literally “loving [one], lover”), from Proto-West Germanic *friund, from Proto-Germanic *frijōndz (“lover, friend”), from Proto-Indo-European *preyH- (“to love”), roughly equivalent to free + -nd.
Cognates
Cognate with Scots freend (“friend”), Yola friend, vriene (“friend”), North Frisian frinj, frün (“friend”), Saterland Frisian Fjund, Früünd (“friend”), West Frisian freon, freondinne (“friend”), Cimbrian bròint, vròint (“friend”), Dutch vriend (“friend”), German Freund (“friend”), German Low German Fründ (“friend, relative”), Luxembourgish Frënd (“friend”), Vilamovian fraeind, frajnd (“friend”), Yiddish פֿרײַנד (fraynd, “friend”), Danish frænde (“kinsman”), Faroese, Icelandic frændi (“kinsman”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk frende (“relative”), Swedish frände (“kinsman, relative”), Gothic 𐍆𐍂𐌹𐌾𐍉𐌽𐌳𐍃 (frijōnds, “friend”). More at free.
Akin to Russian прия́тель (prijátelʹ, “friend”), Romanian prieten, and Sanskrit प्रिय (priyá-, “beloved”).
Senses: examples: text: Lo sluggish Knight the victors happie pray: / So fortune friends the bold [...].
ref: 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.ii:
text: ’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.
ref: 1896, Alfred Edward Housman, A Shropshire Lad, section LXII:
glosses: To act as a friend to, to befriend; to be friendly to, to help.
examples: text: One of the most used features of MySpace is the practice that is nicknamed "friending." If you "friend" someone, then that person is added to your MySpace friends list, and you are added to their friends list.
ref: 2006, Kevin Farnham, Dale G. Farnham, Myspace Safety: 51 Tips for Teens And Parents, How-To Primers, →ISBN, page 69:
text: The two distributions which exhibited this property were in response to the statements, “I am careful about who I friend,” and, “If someone friends me, I will friend them.” (Figure 3).
ref: 2007, David Fono, Kate Raynes-Goldie, “Hyperfriendship and Beyond: Friends and Social Norms on LiveJournal”, in Mia Consalvo, Caroline Haythornthwaite, editors, Internet Research Annual: Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conference 2005 (Digital Formations; 33), volume 4, New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 99:
text: I use Native, that’s what other Native people on Facebook use. I have 660 friends. Tons of Native friends in my feed. Most of my friends, though, are people I don’t know, who’d happily friended me upon request.
ref: 2018, Tommy Orange, “Edwin Black”, in There There, New York, N.Y.: Vintage Books, →ISBN, page 69:
antonyms: defriend
unfriend
glosses: To add (a person) to a list of friends on a social networking site; to officially designate (someone) as a friend.