friend

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship”, in Essays, volume I:

...if you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means.

1917, Richard M. Gummere translating Seneca as Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. I, No. 3

...he who looks upon a true friend, looks, as it were, upon a sort of image of himself. Wherefore friends, though absent, are at hand; though in need, yet abound; though weak, are strong; and—harder saying still—though dead, are yet alive; so great is the esteem on the part of their friends, the tender recollection and the deep longing that still attends them.

1923, William Armistead Falconer translating Cicero as De Amicitia, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. XX, p. 34

...you are my devoted friend too. You do more and work harder and oh shit I'd get maudlin about how damned swell you are. My god I'd like to see you... You're a hell of a good guy.

1927 Mar. 31, Ernest Hemingway, letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Definition of a friend: One who walks in—when the rest of the world walks out.

1933 Dec. 12, Walter Winchell, "On Broadway", Scranton Republican, p. 5

John and I have been friends ever since we were roommates at college. Trust is important between friends. I used to find it hard to make friends when I was shy.

We became friends in the war and remain friends to this day. We were friends with some girls from the other school and stayed friends with them.

A person, typically someone other than a family member, spouse or lover, whose company one enjoys and towards whom one feels affection.

The Automobile Association is every motorist's friend. The police is every law-abiding citizen's friend.

The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about […], or offering services that let you "stay up to date with what your friends are doing",[…]and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention.

2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 27:

a friend of a friend

I added him as a friend on Facebook, but I hardly know him.

A person with whom one is vaguely or indirectly acquainted.

I’m not a friend of cheap wine.

A person who backs or supports something.

Fruit is your friend.

(informal) An object or idea that can be used for good.

You’d better watch it, friend.

(colloquial, ironic, used only in the vocative) Used as a form of address when warning someone.

But don't take the following sections as an endorsement of friends. Top C++ programmers avoid using friends unless absolutely necessary.

In that case, the function needn't (and shouldn't) be a friend.

To make a function be a friend to a class, the reserved word friend precedes the function prototype[…]

2008, D S Malik, C++ Programming: From Problem Analysis to Program Design:

object-oriented programming
object-oriented programming

(object-oriented programming) A function or class granted special access to the private and protected members of another class.

Since they were introduced in the 1970s, friends have revolutionized climbing, making protection possible in previously impossible places […]

spring-loaded camming device
spring-loaded camming device

(climbing) A spring-loaded camming device.

Nor to the motion of a schoolboy's tongue ; Nor never come in visard to my friend

c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:

Time has been, when a gentleman wanted a friend, I could supply him with choice in an hour; but the market is spoiled, and a body might as soon produce a hare or a partridge […]

1813, Samuel Foote, The Commissary, Etc., page 17:

I met your friend. She's very nice, what can I say?

(euphemistic) A lover; a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Friends agree best at a distance.

Make friends of framet folk.

He was not a drop's blood to me, though him and my wife were far-out friends.

(Scotland, obsolete) A relative, a relation by blood or marriage.

Meanwhile on The View, Whoopi Goldberg and friends continue to issue forced apologies for their assumptive comments regarding non-profit organisation Turning Point USA...

(in the plural, usually preceded by "and") Used to refer collectively to a group of associated individuals, especially those comprising a cast, company, or crew

stranger

antonym(s) of “person with whom you are acquainted”

enemy

antonym(s) of “person who provides assistance”

with friends like these who needs enemies

Jamaican Creole: fren

Krio: frɛn

→ Cantonese: friend (fen¹)

→ Finnish: frendi

→ Serbo-Croatian:

Latin script: frȅnd

Cyrillic script: фре̏нд

→ Spanish: friend

സ്നേഹിതന് m (snēhitaṉ) (also means lover)

kámo

(sarcastic) form of address used to warn someone

From Middle English frend, freend, from Old English frēond (“friend”, literally “loving[-one], lover”), from Proto-West Germanic *friund, from Proto-Germanic *frijōndz (“lover, friend”), from Proto-Indo-European *preyH- (“to like, love”), equivalent to free + -nd.
Cognate with Saterland Frisian Fjund, Früünd (“friend”), West Frisian freon, froen, freondinne (“friend”), Dutch vriend (“friend”), Low German Frund, Fründ (“friend, relative”), Luxembourgish Frënd (“friend”), German Freund (“friend”), Danish frænde (“kinsman”), Swedish frände (“kinsman, relative”), Icelandic frændi (“kinsman”), Welsh ffrind (“friend”), Gothic 𐍆𐍂𐌹𐌾𐍉𐌽𐌳𐍃 (frijōnds, “friend”). More at free.
Other cognates include Russian прия́тель (prijátelʹ, “friend”) and Sanskrit प्रिय (priyá-, “beloved”).


friend

Lo sluggish Knight the victors happie pray: / So fortune friends the bold [...].

1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.ii:

’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

1896, Alfred Edward Housman, A Shropshire Lad, section LXII:

(transitive, obsolete) To act as a friend to, to befriend; to be friendly to, to help.

One of the most used features of MySpace is the practice that is nicknamed "friending." If you "friend" someone, then that person is added to your MySpace friends list, and you are added to their friends list.

2006, Kevin Farnham, Dale G. Farnham, Myspace Safety: 51 Tips for Teens And Parents, How-To Primers, →ISBN, page 69:

The two distributions which exhibited this property were in response to the statements, “I am careful about who I friend,” and, “If someone friends me, I will friend them.” (Figure 3).

2007, David Fono, Kate Raynes-Goldie, “Hyperfriendship and Beyond: Friends and Social Norms on LiveJournal”, in Mia Consalvo, Caroline Haythornthwaite, editors, Internet Research Annual: Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conference 2005 (Digital Formations; 33), volume 4, New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 99:

I use Native, that’s what other Native people on Facebook use. I have 660 friends. Tons of Native friends in my feed. Most of my friends, though, are people I don’t know, who’d happily friended me upon request.

2018, Tommy Orange, “Edwin Black”, in There There, New York, N.Y.: Vintage Books, →ISBN, page 69:

(transitive) To add (a person) to a list of friends on a social networking site; to officially designate (someone) as a friend.

en-verb

friend (third-person singular simple present friends, present participle friending, simple past and past participle friended)

friends (present singular third-person)
friending (participle present)
friended (participle past)
friended (past)