sidekick
Americannoun
-
a close friend.
-
a confederate or assistant.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sidekick
Explanation
A sidekick is a buddy who comes with you on your adventures. If you’re a superhero, your sidekick helps you fight crime. Electra Woman’s sidekick was the teenage Dyna Girl, and in the ‘70s they defeated villains on TV. A sidekick might be a work assistant, a best friend, or even a devoted dog that follows you to school every day. Sometimes this word signifies an imbalance of power, though; if you say, “This is my sidekick, Sarah," it implies that Sarah has less authority than you do. The origin of this word is unknown, but we do know that it appeared after the terms side-pal and side-partner fell out of fashion.
Vocabulary lists containing sidekick
Superhero Lexicon
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New Kid
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Comic Book Day
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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:
Who, then, was the sidekick in that relationship?
From Slate ● Jul. 14, 2026
And for a time he becomes the sidekick of an out-of-work guerrilla in the Central African Republic.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 8, 2026
Over the course of the regular season, James had demoted himself to a sidekick role, sacrificing shot attempts while Austin Reaves and MVP candidate Luka Doncic took over the limelight.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 26, 2026
Meanwhile, he and others relegated Huerta to sidekick status, both in the trenches and in the public — and the image makers followed his lead.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 19, 2026
They tried everything: telling jokes, country and western songs, a ventriloquist act with a lovable fuzzy sidekick, photo ops with terminally ill children.
From "Beauty Queens" by Libba Bray
Channel 5 news presenter and former BBC Breakfast host Dan Walker, Radio 2's DJ Spoony, and Ball's breakfast show sidekicks Mike Williams and Richie Anderson were also among those who sent good wishes.
From BBC ● Jun. 16, 2026
In “Predator: Badlands,” that involved giving an ugly monster emotional vulnerability and a PG-13 adventure with a couple sidekicks, including a chatty android played by Elle Fanning.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 9, 2025
In the latest Marvel chapter, Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan and a squad of supporting sidekicks battle a diabolical CIA director played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 2, 2025
They’re like Boris and Natasha, if Boris and Natasha had gay sidekicks whose equally unsurprising side plot would’ve made a more thorny and altogether insightful critique of contemporary social politics.
From Salon ● Jan. 31, 2025
But if Scruffy and Nala got to Duke first, Duke would undoubtedly stick with his old sidekicks because they were part of his heroic rescue team.
From "Dog Squad" by Chris Grabenstein
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.
