"public Friend" meaning in English

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  "etymology_text": "Friend denoted a member of the Society of Friends i.e. a Quaker.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "public Friends",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
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      "expansion": "public Friend (plural public Friends)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
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        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Quakerism",
          "orig": "en:Quakerism",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1830, John Fanning Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, being a collection of memoirs, page 599",
          "text": "Thomas Story [1670?–1742], a public Friend and the Recorder of the city, has also spoken of this calamity [an excessively hot summer in 1699] in his Journal, as being a scourge which carried off from six to eight of the inhabitants daily, [...in total] about 220, of whom about 80 to 90 were of the Society of Friends.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1846, Robert Smith, editor, The Friend, volume 1, page 172",
          "text": "George Gray, a public Friend, who had come from Barbadoes early to settle in Pennsylvania, this year returned thither again in the service of the ministry.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1857, The Friend: A Religious and Literary Journal, page 188",
          "text": "[...] through the wilderness four hundred miles or more, where no public Friend had ever travelled before: the journey was perilous, but the Lord was with him; who may, in his own time, make way for his servants in those desert places.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, Richard L. Greaves, God's Other Children: Protestant Nonconformists and the Emergence of Denominational Churches in Ireland, 1660-1700, Stanford University Press, page 295",
          "text": "Because Quakers eschewed a professional ministry and formal ordination, their ministers—public Friends—operated with relatively few restrictions in comparison, for example, with conformist or Presbyterian clergy. […] A certificate amounted to a meeting's stamp of approval that the bearer was qualified to be a public Friend. For a public Friend about to embark on \"truth's service,\" the monthly meeting provided a certificate, as the Dublin men did for Anthony ...",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Amanda E. Herbert, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain, Yale University Press, page 145",
          "text": "As late as the 1750s the actions of Public Friends were considered to be strange, and their motivations unknowable, even sometimes to fellow Quakers. Repetitious, wide-ranging travel was dangerous and painful in this period.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A Quaker authorized to travel between meetings and communities to preach; a Quaker preacher (in the 18th and 19th centuries)."
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      "id": "en-public_Friend-en-noun-3v7PRlrj",
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        [
          "preacher",
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      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "Public Friend"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Society of Friends"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "public Friend"
}

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      "expansion": "Friend",
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    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Friend denoted a member of the Society of Friends i.e. a Quaker.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "public Friends",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "public Friend (plural public Friends)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1830, John Fanning Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, being a collection of memoirs, page 599",
          "text": "Thomas Story [1670?–1742], a public Friend and the Recorder of the city, has also spoken of this calamity [an excessively hot summer in 1699] in his Journal, as being a scourge which carried off from six to eight of the inhabitants daily, [...in total] about 220, of whom about 80 to 90 were of the Society of Friends.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1846, Robert Smith, editor, The Friend, volume 1, page 172",
          "text": "George Gray, a public Friend, who had come from Barbadoes early to settle in Pennsylvania, this year returned thither again in the service of the ministry.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1857, The Friend: A Religious and Literary Journal, page 188",
          "text": "[...] through the wilderness four hundred miles or more, where no public Friend had ever travelled before: the journey was perilous, but the Lord was with him; who may, in his own time, make way for his servants in those desert places.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, Richard L. Greaves, God's Other Children: Protestant Nonconformists and the Emergence of Denominational Churches in Ireland, 1660-1700, Stanford University Press, page 295",
          "text": "Because Quakers eschewed a professional ministry and formal ordination, their ministers—public Friends—operated with relatively few restrictions in comparison, for example, with conformist or Presbyterian clergy. […] A certificate amounted to a meeting's stamp of approval that the bearer was qualified to be a public Friend. For a public Friend about to embark on \"truth's service,\" the monthly meeting provided a certificate, as the Dublin men did for Anthony ...",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Amanda E. Herbert, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain, Yale University Press, page 145",
          "text": "As late as the 1750s the actions of Public Friends were considered to be strange, and their motivations unknowable, even sometimes to fellow Quakers. Repetitious, wide-ranging travel was dangerous and painful in this period.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
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          "preacher"
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        "Society of Friends"
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "Public Friend"
    }
  ],
  "word": "public Friend"
}