friend
/fɹɛnd/noun, verb
friend is spelled F-R-I-E-N-D. The wrong spelling people search most is freind: about 460 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 17 of all searches for the word. Friend is a noun meaning “A person, typically someone other than a family member, spouse or lover, whose company one enjoys and towards…”. The plural of friend is friends.
How many letters and syllables are in friend?
| Letters | 6: F-R-I-E-N-D |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 |
| In writing | 234 times per million words; the 425th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, freind, about 460 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Rhymes with | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell friend?
Friend is spelled F-R-I-E-N-D. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 17 of the searches for friend in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is friend?
Friend appears 234 times per million words in written English, the 425th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce friend?
- US /fɹɛnd/
- US [fɹ̥ɛnd]
- US [fɹ̥ɛnd̥]
Friend has one syllable.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-friend.ogg, En-us-friend.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with friend?
The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as friend from its last stressed vowel (/ɛnd/):
Spelled with the same letters in another order: finder, redfin, refind.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of friend
- friends plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- frind
- friending participle, present
- friended participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does friend mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A person, typically someone other than a family member, spouse or lover, whose company one enjoys and towards whom one feels affection.
...if you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means.
- 2
An associate who provides assistance; patron, mentor.
The Automobile Association is every motorist's friend. The police is every law-abiding citizen's friend.
- 3
A person with whom one is vaguely or indirectly acquainted.
a friend of a friend
- 4
A person who backs or supports something.
I’m not a friend of cheap wine.
- 5
informalAn object or idea that can be used for good.
Fruit is your friend.
- 6
colloquialUsed as a form of address when warning someone.
You’d better watch it, friend.
- 7
A function or class granted special access to the private and protected members of another class.
- 8
A spring-loaded camming device.
verb
- 1
obsoleteTo act as a friend to, to befriend; to be friendly to, to help.
- 2
To add (a person) to a list of friends on a social networking site; to officially designate (someone) as a friend.
noun
- 1
A Quaker; a member of the Society of Friends. (See also Friends.)
- 2
Brand name of a spring-loaded camming device, now used to refer to any such device, often uncapitalized, as friend.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate friend?
Wiktionary records 2 abbreviations of friend: fd, frd.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Friend in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | ami, copain, amie f copine , petit ami, petite amie , se lier d'amitié (avec) |
| German | Freund, Kumpel, Kamerad, Freundin, Kumpelin, Kumpeline |
| Portuguese | amigo, amiga , namorado, namorada , conhecido, conhecida |
| Spanish | amigo, amiga, chochera, amistad, cousín, parcero |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does friend come from?
From Middle English freend, frend, frende, freynde, friend, frind, frond, frund, vrend, vryend, from Old English frēond, frīond (“friend”, literally “loving [one], lover”), from Proto-West Germanic *friund, from Proto-Germanic *frijōndz (“friend, loved one”), from Proto-Indo-European *preyH- (“to please; to love”), roughly equivalent to free + -nd. See also Friday.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).