Word.ws English Dictionary

keep your friends close, and your enemies closer

keep your friends close, and your enemies closer proverb: one should maintain outwardly friendly relations even with their adversaries to give them a false sense of trust, thereby making it easier to closely monitor their intentions and anticipate their actions.

Proverb

keep your friends close, and your enemies closer

  1. One should maintain outwardly friendly relations even with their adversaries to give them a false sense of trust, thereby making it easier to closely monitor their intentions and anticipate their actions.

Questions about keep your friends close, and your enemies closer

What does keep your friends close, and your enemies closer mean?
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer means one should maintain outwardly friendly relations even with their adversaries to give them a false sense of trust, thereby making it easier to closely monitor their intentions and anticipate their actions.
What part of speech is keep your friends close, and your enemies closer?
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer is a proverb.

Words near keep your friends close, and your enemies closer in the dictionary

  1. keep up with the times
  2. keep vigil
  3. keep ward
  4. keep watch
  5. keep wicket
  6. keep your friends close, and your enemies closer
  7. keep yourself safe
  8. keep'st
  9. keep-away
  10. keep-worthy
  11. keepability

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer (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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