frenemy
/ˈfɹɛ.nɪ.mi/
frenemy noun: someone who has traits of an enemy and a friend.
Noun
frenemy (plural frenemies)
- Someone who has traits of an enemy and a friend.
- Painting with a bland stroke, hardly mixing color on palette or canvas, working neatly, quickly, deftly, and a bit hygienically—like an Old World gentleman—over his “spontaneous” projects—indeed, “tickling” his way along, to borrow frenemy Picasso's devastating verb—he [Henri Matisse] seems never...1952 February 9, Manny Farber, “Art”, in The Nation, volume 174, number 6, page 140
- Another enemy / Not even a frenemy.1987, by Eric B. and Rakim, “I Ain't No Joke”, in Paid in Full
- A fair-weather friend who is also a rival.
- So, we're definitely not going to be friends with Ferguson? Maybe we can be frenemies. A love-hate relationship's the next best thing.2008 April 6, Erin Ehrlich, Six Characters in Search of a House (King of the Hill), season 12, episode 17, spoken by Bill Dauterive (Stephen Root)
frenemy meaning in Arabic
frenemy in Arabic
- Someone who has traits of an enemy and a friend
- الصَّدِيقُ العَدُوُّ aṣ-ṣadīqu l-ʕaduwwu
- fair-weather friend who is also a rival
- صَدِيقُ مَصْلَحَة ṣadīqu maṣlaḥa
Examples of frenemy in a sentence
- In France the Seine has all the advantages of Northernness (a quality underrated by our Gallic frenemy) but it is too fatally interested in Paris […]2001, John Lanchester, The Debt to Pleasure.:
- You know when you dump a guy, only to discover years later that he's evolved into the perfect boyfriend—for the high-school frenemy who convinced you to dump him in the first place...?2004, Andrea Semple, The Ex-Factor, back cover:
- Gates made a rare and instructive appearance with his longtime frenemy Steve Jobs.2007 June 18, Time:
Forms of frenemy
| plural | frenemies |
|---|
Origin of frenemy
Blend of friend + enemy. Invented independently multiple times. Attested in 1952 without any scare quotes or self-referential apology, clearly suggesting that the writer expected his audience to be unsurprised by encountering the word, but used by other writers in 1979 and 1992 in ways that indicate that those writers considered it a nonce blend and expected that their audiences would view it that way too; these examples are evidence that the word existed for many decades during which it was not yet widely familiar or established (which it now is).
Words formed from frenemy
Questions about frenemy
- What does frenemy mean?
- Frenemy means someone who has traits of an enemy and a friend.
- What is frenemy in Arabic?
- Frenemy in Arabic is الصَّدِيقُ العَدُوُّ (aṣ-ṣadīqu l-ʕaduwwu), صَدِيقُ مَصْلَحَة (ṣadīqu maṣlaḥa). See Frenemy meaning in Arabic.
- How do you use frenemy in a sentence?
- In France the Seine has all the advantages of Northernness (a quality underrated by our Gallic frenemy) but it is too fatally interested in Paris […]
- What part of speech is frenemy?
- Frenemy is a noun.
- How do you pronounce frenemy?
- Frenemy is pronounced /ˈfɹɛ.nɪ.mi/.
- What is the plural of frenemy?
- The plural of frenemy is frenemies.
Words near frenemy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: frenemy (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-frenemy.wav.
Cite this entry: “frenemy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/frenemy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.