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:
The Paxtons’ friend, Chip Loper, runs the trust.
From Salon ● Oct. 11, 2026
She mainly shops at Boots for skincare, first aid and medicine, but thinks prices for its sanitary products are "ridiculously expensive" - something her friend Yasmin agrees with.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
He portrays Mr. David, for all the comedian’s considerable idiosyncrasies, as an indisputable comic genius, a doting father and a loyal friend.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
“We have a friend who needs a house, and we always give a lot to Doctors Without Borders,” she said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2026
"Sancho, my friend, I am in luck," said Don Quixote.
From "Adventures of Don Quixote" by Argentina Palacios
Then, in June, the company said Friend would step down as CFO within two months, and leave the company in early September with $6 million in cash severance.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
Friend of Slate Jay Willis, the editor in chief of Balls & Strikes, writes about the devolution of SCOTUSblog, the go-to outlet for Supreme Court news for nearly a quarter century.
From Slate ● Oct. 1, 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
As Sara emerges as the ever-dwindling group’s heroine, Max goes from being the bossy but loveable Alpha Friend to She Who Must Be Obeyed, even as she makes the worst decisions possible.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
"You require passage for a hundred Dothraki, all their horses, yourself and this knight, and three dragons?" said the captain of the great cog Ardent Friend before he walked away laughing.
From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin
Nearly a quarter of first-time home buyers relied on financial help from family or friends in the form of loans or direct gifts for down payments, according to a 2025 National Association of Realtors report.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 11, 2026
Some of my friends made fun of me.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 11, 2026
"My wife died and didn't know. I never told anybody. In fact, she always complained - all your friends, when they come visit, they all have stories to tell and you never tell anything."
From BBC ● Oct. 10, 2026
The Surge has pulled its giant foam finger saying “DEBATES” out of storage, because friends, it is debate season.
From Slate ● Oct. 10, 2026
If the cottonmouths hadn’t been enraged before, they were now, determined to destroy the possessed branch that had just bludgeoned three of their friends.
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
Just before Christmas 2022, someone purporting to be a San Diego woman named Viktoria Zara friended Kevin on Facebook.
From Salon ● Jun. 26, 2025
“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
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
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
Why the Cool Kids Are Playing Dungeons & Dragons Annalee Newitz traded Facebook for D&D: What drove me away from Facebook wasn’t just the fake friending.
From The Verge ● Apr. 9, 2019
But all the time I knew perfectly well that the great show of honor and "friending" was not for me alone.
From The Story of My Life Recollections and Reflections by Ellen Terry
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.
