friend
noun
a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
Showing results for friend.
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friendom.
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:
A lifelong Parton fan, Hadley chokes up while detailing how she was at work when a friend texted to say the singer had died.
From BBC ● Aug. 29, 2026
In practice, though, the museum friends and the beach friends are forming opposing factions, and the vegetarian friend is hovering between malnourishment and total banishment.
From Slate ● Aug. 28, 2026
Caesar orders his friend to marry and divorce to satisfy dynastic imperatives, and forcibly adopts Agrippa’s children when it suits him.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
"His own military roots made him a champion of the Norwegian military and a long-time friend of NATO," he wrote online.
From Barron's ● Aug. 28, 2026
He resembles Parker but is more muscular than my slender friend.
From "Legendary Frybread Drive-In" by Cynthia Leitich Smith
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
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
Denton succeeds Matthew Friend, who will stay on through Sept. 4 “to support an orderly transition,” Nike said.
From Barron's ● Jun. 24, 2026
GOLDEN, the viral single from the animated hit K-Pop Demon Hunters, was named Song of the Year, and Sabrina Carpenter won Album of the Year for Man's Best Friend.
From BBC ● May 26, 2026
Perhaps you’re wondering why the fact that trees talk wasn’t covered in science class, during those Mother Nature Is Our Friend lessons.
From "Wishtree" by Katherine Applegate
Speaking to the BBC in 2024, he said: "I often wonder why I've lived this long and so many of my mates and friends got killed."
From BBC ● Aug. 28, 2026
Mr. Rogers has been courting Lebanese Christian and Iraqi Catholic Chaldean voters, and even Sunni and Shiite Muslims: “I have friends in the Muslim community who are eager to be a counterweight.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
“My heart breaks for the world, her family and friends who will miss her deeply. We’re in this loss together and we will see her in all of the most beautiful things.”
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 28, 2026
The idea of a big ol’ group of friends taking a vacation sounds so fun…in theory.
From Slate ● Aug. 28, 2026
The last time she had held this posture was when Jason had snuck out to hang with his friends on a school night.
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
“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
“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
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.
