Word.ws English Dictionary

asking for a friend

asking for a friend phrase: indicates that a question is embarrassing by pretending to be posing the question on behalf of another person.

Phrase

asking for a friend

  1. (humorous, idiomatic) Indicates that a question is embarrassing by pretending to be posing the question on behalf of another person.
    • “Oh, please, like we'd ever believe that whole 'I'm asking for a friend' routine.”2015, Belle Payton, Even the Score, page 70
    • How many more of these #debates do we have to suffer through? Asking for a friend. — Eva Amurri Martino (@TheHappilyEva)2016 October 9, “Celebrities React to Presidential Town Hall Debate 2016”, in Just Jared

Questions about asking for a friend

What does asking for a friend mean?
Asking for a friend means indicates that a question is embarrassing by pretending to be posing the question on behalf of another person.
What part of speech is asking for a friend?
Asking for a friend is a phrase.

Words near asking for a friend in the dictionary

  1. asking
  2. asking after
  3. asking around
  4. asking back
  5. asking for
  6. asking for a friend
  7. asking for it
  8. asking for someone's hand in marriage
  9. asking for the moon
  10. asking for trouble
  11. asking how high when someone says jump

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: asking for a friend (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-asking for a friend.ogg.

Cite this entry: “asking for a friend.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/asking_for_a_friend. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.