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.
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.
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.
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)
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."
See acquaintance.
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”
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.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Slate’s Sam Adams explains how Netflix became a bad TV friend.
From Slate ● Jul. 23, 2026
"There will never be another Ozzy. I miss you my dear friend."
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
Looking back on his early years, Damon recalled traveling to New York with his childhood friend and fellow actor, Ben Affleck, in hopes of landing acting jobs.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 22, 2026
He entered Barker’s orbit in 2024 when the director’s comedy team, That’s a Bad Idea, was looking for original music and a mutual friend hit up a producer Burwell collaborated with.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
The priest and the barber spent long hours chatting with their friend, just as they had in the good old days.
From "Adventures of Don Quixote" by Argentina Palacios
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
Other apps, including Focus Friend and Forest, gamify and reward putting down the phone.
From The Wall Street Journal ● 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
Friend of Slate Aziz Huq, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, analyzes the agreement between Trump and the IRS over the settlement of his lawsuit.
From Slate ● May 28, 2026
Maybe I will, but just because I was left behind doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have a Last Friend.
From "They Both Die at the End" by Adam Silvera
Later that night, the suspect, who was visiting Santa Monica with family, went alone to the pier, where he met up with a group of friends, according to police.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2026
She said it was also challenging because she was "never very good in school", but was determined to keep going, with the help of her family and friends.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
In the hours after the humiliating public disclosure, Roh told friends she wondered whether she had been too selfish and inconsiderate of her husband’s emotions, according to local media reports.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
“When you’ve got five kids, and usually a houseful of friends hanging out, flexibility is imperative.”
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 23, 2026
She writes to friends and asks if someone can send her a guitar, ukulele, mandolin, banjo—any instrument will do.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
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
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
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
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 Gough, George W.
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.
