friend
noun
a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
friend
American
[frend]
/ frɛnd /
noun
-
friends
plural
-
a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
-
a person who gives assistance; patron; supporter
friends of the Boston Symphony.
-
a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile.
Who goes there? Friend or foe?
-
a member of the same nation, party, etc.
- Synonyms:
- compatriot, confrere, associate, ally
-
Friend, a member of the Society of Friends; a Quaker.
The religious practices of Friends are founded in direct communion with God.
-
a person associated with another as a contact on a social media website.
We've never met, but we're Facebook friends.
verb (used with object)
-
friends,
present (3rd person singular)
-
friended,
past participle, past
-
friending
present participle
-
Rare. to befriend.
-
to add (a person) to one's list of contacts on a social media website.
I just friended a couple of guys in my class.
idioms
friend
1
British
/ frɛnd /
noun
-
a person known well to another and regarded with liking, affection, and loyalty; an intimate
-
an acquaintance or associate
-
an ally in a fight or cause; supporter
-
a fellow member of a party, society, etc
-
a patron or supporter
a friend of the opera
-
to be friendly (with)
-
to become friendly (with)
verb
Friend
2
British
/ frɛnd /
noun
Friend
3
British
/ frɛnd /
noun
friend
More Idioms
Usage
Spelling tips for friend The word friend is hard to spell for two reasons. First, it sounds like [ frend ], making it easy to miss the i. Second, even if you know there is an i, it can be difficult to remember the order of the i and the e. How to spell friend: To remember that friend has an i in it, think of the phrase "I see my friends on Friday." Both friend and Friday begin fri-. If you remember that friend has an i in it, but just can't remember where it goes, keep in mind the classic mnemonic device "I before E, except after C."
Synonym Usage
See acquaintance.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
friendsimple
-
friendssimple
-
have friendedperfect
-
has friendedperfect
-
am friendingprogressive
-
are friendingprogressive
-
is friendingprogressive
-
have been friendingperfect progressive
-
has been friendingperfect progressive
Past
-
friendedsimple
-
had friendedperfect
-
was friendingprogressive
-
were friendingprogressive
-
had been friendingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of friend
First recorded before 900; Middle English friend, frend, Old English frēond “friend, lover, relative” (cognate with Old Saxon friund, Old High German friunt ( German Freund ), Gothic frijōnds ), originally the present participle of frēogan, cognate with Gothic frijōn “to love”
Explanation
A friend is your buddy, your pal, your amigo, your comrade. You know, someone you trust and like enough to hang out with on a regular basis. The noun friend comes to us from the Old English word freond. Back then you had to be careful to not confuse freond with feond, which meant “fiend or enemy.” These days it's pretty tough to get mixed up though. Friends are the people you can count on, the ones that make you laugh and throw you birthday parties. Enemies are generally the mean ones.
Vocabulary lists containing friend
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Royal duty can be formal, even distant at times, but the story of Rob Burrow, his family and his friend Sir Kevin has clearly made an impact on a future King.
From BBC ● Oct. 26, 2026
He was a writer, a teacher, a thoughtful man, and a loyal friend.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 26, 2026
He wasn’t working per se, just helping out Keket, a friend.
From Slate ● Oct. 26, 2026
I’ll be disagreeing with my friend with great taste in sweaters and film who, if for only those reasons, can’t be wrong about everything.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 25, 2026
While she’s with Lulu, however, she’s welcomed like a beloved friend.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
Appeared in the September 11, 2026, print edition as 'The Day We Lost My Friend Arlene'.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 10, 2026
Friend and owner of Phoebe Peacock, a boutique gift shop and perfumery, Jennifer Hardaway, encouraged Cassaday and Jacob to reopen near her on Magnolia Avenue.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 7, 2026
That July, a shipment that included Human Rights, the Emancipator, and a children’s magazine called the Slave’s Friend arrived in Charleston, South Carolina.
From Slate ● Sep. 4, 2026
If spotting a rare creature in the wild wasn't challenging enough, the numbat is a squirrel-sized camouflage connoisseur, explains Dr Tony Friend, the godfather of conservation in the state of Western Australia.
From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2026
I rushed home from school, to the church, to the altar, to be alone there, to commune with Jesus, my dearest Friend, who would never fail me, who knew all the secrets of my heart.
From "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin
Do you and your friends discuss your savings, debt and salary, or do you just complain about how expensive brunch has gotten and send the same $20 back and forth to each other on Venmo?
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 27, 2026
One of Perry’s longtime friends, David Pressman, says toward the end of the documentary that Perry would want people to talk in the documentary about how funny he was.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2026
Like many in Saguenay, Boivin has a long list of family members and friends in the aluminum business.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2026
It’s the way he was with his friends.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2026
Before Don Alonso had become Don Quixote, he had had two good friends: the village priest and the village· barber.
From "Adventures of Don Quixote" by Argentina Palacios
The musician, who did not know Counterman, never responded and blocked Counterman, but he friended Whalen under other names to continue the messages.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 13, 2023
“Facebook would always tell me, oh, you should be friends with Steve Badger, but I never friended him because I thought he was so mad at me about our awkward breakup,” Calkins said.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 4, 2021
“Facebook was new and sparkly and you friended everyone,” said Ms. Schloss, who graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan.
From New York Times ● Feb. 5, 2021
Ford Fischer, an independent journalist and prolific Wohl watcher whose video was linked in the above Instagram post, told me that Garcia-Andrews had friended him last October on Facebook.
From Salon ● Jun. 4, 2020
Since Tea Cake and Janie had friended with the Bahaman workers in the ’Glades, they, the “Saws,” had been gradually drawn into the American crowd.
From "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston
In Slatten’s case, Singh had been catfishing her via a fake Facebook profile, friending her in 2013, but he ultimately came clean about his identity.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2026
Imagine people friending you six months before an election and they're talking to you.
From Salon ● Feb. 27, 2025
The News Feed, which dropped the “News” from its name earlier this year, pioneered a social feed that learns from explicit cues you give it, such as friending someone or following a page.
From The Verge ● Jun. 15, 2022
For months, many of them have been posting comments and photos, friending each other and following fake Trump accounts.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 22, 2022
There was very sharp work between Stanley and John Russell, who left off noble friending and took to noble lording him, to show that they were quite two.
From The Greville Memoirs A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III by Charles Greville
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
