FreeScrabbleDictionary

frenemy

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
15
Words With Friends
16
Letters
7
Pronunciation
/ˈfɹɛ.nɪ.mi/

Definition of frenemy

2 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. (humorous, sometimes)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 to be deeply involved or even slightly carried away by his work.”
    “Another enemy / Not even a frenemy.”
    “Frenemies who when you're down ain't your friend”
    “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 […]”
    “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...?”
See all 2 definitions

noun

  1. (humorous, sometimes)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 to be deeply involved or even slightly carried away by his work.”
    “Another enemy / Not even a frenemy.”
    “Frenemies who when you're down ain't your friend”
    “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 […]”
    “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...?”
  2. (humorous, sometimes)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.”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

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…

See full etymology

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 you can make from frenemy

46 playable · top: FERNY (11 pts)

Best play ferny 11 points

5-letter words

4 words

4-letter words

13 words

3-letter words

18 words

2-letter words

10 words

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