How many times have you said something similar, when you can't really think of the word to describe your relationship to that person?
‘Friend’ has become a catch-all term, encompassing everyone from best friends to anyone whose existence we have been vaguely aware of for a while.
So how can we be a bit more specific?
‘Buddy’, used by itself, is still relatively rare in British English.
‘Drinking buddy’, though, denoting someone who you go to the pub with, but don’t share the intimate ups and downs* of your life with, is becoming increasingly common. It often has ‘just’ inserted before it.
“He’s just a drinking buddy, he won’t bother to come round and listen to you go on and on** after your wife’s left you.”
Indeed, a ‘drinking buddy’ has more in common with an ‘aquaintance’, someone you see around your workplace or neighbourhood and perhaps say a few casual words to, but don’t really know on any deeper level.
‘Friend’ and ‘mate’ are both used to signify a deeper connection, but generally require a qualifier to explain the level of the relationship.
A ‘best friend’ is someone you’re especially close to. Even though it’s a superlative, confusingly, it can actually refer to several people, you can have a number of ‘best friends’.
In a similar vein, buddy makes another appearance as a collocation with ‘best’ - possibly because of the rather neat-sounding alliteration of ‘best buddy’, or ‘best buddies’.
‘Close’ friend is similar to ‘best’ but the subjects are generally not quite as close. Beware, though: ‘close friend’ is sometimes used as a euphemism for someone you have an illicit relationship with. Imagine it followed by a wink.
“Yes, he’s a close friend…”
If people want to explain that someone has been in their life a long time, they might call them their ‘childhood friend’. Usually, this refers to a person they know from their school days and who they still see - at least occasionally - now.
Sometimes, sadly, a ‘childhood friend’ can become a ‘former friend’. (Note, not generally an ‘ex friend’.)
Lastly, no analysis of the language of friendship would be complete without mentioning the infamous (and often mythical?) ‘friend-of-a-friend’, a person who exists mainly to provide improbable-but-impossible-to-disprove anecdotes.
“A friend-of-a-friend told me an absolutely amazing story about…”
Where would we be without them?
*Good and bad parts.
**Talk rather a lot.
How many times have you said something similar, when you can't really think of the word to describe your relationship to that person?
‘Friend’ has become a catch-all term, encompassing everyone from best friends to anyone whose existence we have been vaguely aware of for a while.
So how can we be a bit more specific?
‘Buddy’, used by itself, is still relatively rare in British English.
‘Drinking buddy’, though, denoting someone who you go to the pub with, but don’t share the intimate ups and downs* of your life with, is becoming increasingly common. It often has ‘just’ inserted before it.
“He’s just a drinking buddy, he won’t bother to come round and listen to you go on and on** after your wife’s left you.”
Indeed, a ‘drinking buddy’ has more in common with an ‘aquaintance’, someone you see around your workplace or neighbourhood and perhaps say a few casual words to, but don’t really know on any deeper level.
‘Friend’ and ‘mate’ are both used to signify a deeper connection, but generally require a qualifier to explain the level of the relationship.
A ‘best friend’ is someone you’re especially close to. Even though it’s a superlative, confusingly, it can actually refer to several people, you can have a number of ‘best friends’.
In a similar vein, buddy makes another appearance as a collocation with ‘best’ - possibly because of the rather neat-sounding alliteration of ‘best buddy’, or ‘best buddies’.
‘Close’ friend is similar to ‘best’ but the subjects are generally not quite as close. Beware, though: ‘close friend’ is sometimes used as a euphemism for someone you have an illicit relationship with. Imagine it followed by a wink.
“Yes, he’s a close friend…”
If people want to explain that someone has been in their life a long time, they might call them their ‘childhood friend’. Usually, this refers to a person they know from their school days and who they still see - at least occasionally - now.
Sometimes, sadly, a ‘childhood friend’ can become a ‘former friend’. (Note, not generally an ‘ex friend’.)
Lastly, no analysis of the language of friendship would be complete without mentioning the infamous (and often mythical?) ‘friend-of-a-friend’, a person who exists mainly to provide improbable-but-impossible-to-disprove anecdotes.
“A friend-of-a-friend told me an absolutely amazing story about…”
Where would we be without them?
*Good and bad parts.
**Talk rather a lot.
.
Sunday, June 14, 2020
.
Friendship words
