Word of the Day:
frenemy
What It Means
Someone who has traits of an enemy and a friend.
A fair-weather friend who is also a rival.
Frenemy in Context
“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.”
Did You Know?
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).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: frenemy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “frenemy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/frenemy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.