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
Spelling Practice, Unit 2
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Spelling Practice 1, Unit 4
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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:
Prosecutors accused him of passing tips on the firm’s clients to a friend in exchange for gifts of cash and luxury goods, including a Rolex watch.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
When you find one that is gracious enough to host you, it can feel like discovering a rare gem in a mine of homebodies and those siloed to their own friend groups or families.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 11, 2026
He said he traveled with Orr as a friend that day, had previously supported her professionally and offered her a job, according to the report.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026
A friend of the booster passed along the message that the booster felt bad.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2026
“Believe this: I’m sorry. And as Usher of Deadwood Forest, but more important, as your friend, I will not lie to you again.”
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
“Our greatest impact is by investing in today’s students experiencing homelessness,” said Jennifer Friend, CEO of Project Hope Alliance, one of Scholarship Prep’s community partners.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
Other apps, including Focus Friend and Forest, gamify and reward putting down the phone.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
Matthew Friend, the current CFO, will leave that role but stay with the company through Sept. 4 to help with the transition.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 30, 2026
Prior to that, the first song he ever recorded was Elvis Presley's The Girl of My Best Friend.
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2026
“You know I mean girlfriend, right? Not, like, girl, period. Friend, period.”
From "Far from the Tree" by Robin Benway
The moment Mingma G first saw his friends on the mountain still haunts him.
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2026
“I’m not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
Making friends as an adult can be hard.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 11, 2026
Yet that perception quickly began to fade as the London-based designer spent more time actually experiencing the city with friends.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026
We wave goodbye to my parents and their friends, and Dad whistles to Scrappy, who runs to join them.
From "Legendary Frybread Drive-In" by Cynthia Leitich Smith
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
Six years later, in July 2007, with camp and about two dozen mutual friends in common, she friended him on Facebook before they each headed off to college.
From New York Times ● Feb. 5, 2021
A 2019 Swalwell campaign video shows the congressman and his family members on screen, and they appear to be the same people in the Facebook photos of the accounts friended to Fang.
From Fox News ● Dec. 9, 2020
“I’ve seen it. You friended me. And JP’s got one too.”
From "Winger" by Andrew Smith
Imagine people friending you six months before an election and they're talking to you.
From Salon ● Feb. 27, 2025
“We often have free stuff,” Lu said in Mandarin to two men who crossed the border in January, after friending them on WeChat at the vegetable giveaway.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2023
But even if you could somehow equalize those things, the researchers suggest that would close only about half the gap, because of friending bias — the propensity of people to mostly befriend others like them.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 7, 2022
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
I was thinking I'd gang all the way to London without coming across a man worth fighting, much less friending, but I was in the wrang of it.
From The Yeoman Adventurer by George W. Gough
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
