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词组 friend
释义
acquaintance, cobber, companion, comrade
These words all refer to a close or informal relationship with another person, distinguished on one hand from formal business relationships and on the other from closer love or family relationships. Friend in Shakespearean England meant one’s mistress. Now, of course, it has lost this sexual meaning completely and means simply a person one is fond of and chooses to associate with. A business associate, one’s spouse, or a member of one’s family all may or may not be one’s friend , while a friend , conversely, may or may not be a person with whom one would wish to work or live. An acquaintance is a person one has met and sees occasionally with cordiality but without intimacy: acquaintances who were destined never to become friends . Companion is ambiguous. It may suggest the closeness of friend : my constant companion . Or it may suggest the casual association of acquaintance : my companions on the ocean liner. In either case, it stresses the physical presence of the person referred to; in the latter case, the relationship might be controlled strictly by chance or necessity, without even the implied cordiality of acquaintance .
The rest of these words relate to the closeness of friend , each with a unique overtone that implies its own particular kind of closeness. Intimate suggests inseparable and affectionate friendship, but is less frequently used in this sense nowadays, because the sexual reference of the word in another context obtrudes here where no note of sexuality was originally intended. Comrade also has suffered because of the obtrusion of another meaning of the word. Originally used for a man’s male friend , with jolliness and heartness as overtones, it has lost out to its specific use as a form of address among members of the Communist Party: Prince Hal’s bawdy comrades ; his comrades on the revolutionary council that governed the country.
Crony is now a more widely used informal word for a close friend than either intimate or comrade , but it has a strong colloquial tang and implies the gossipy closeness of a clique: his cronies at the club. Its common form, "old crony ," suggests a relationship of long standing based on reminiscence: old cronies who on Saturday nights relived the major battles of World War II. Many slang words exist to describe close friends ; the most common are mate and cobber , although the latter is not so widely used as it once was. These partially replace such choices as chum, pal or the Americanism buddy: my mate at work; one of my best cobbers . The frequency with which words for a male friend rise into an fall from favour perhaps suggests an embarrassment over the affectionate side of friendship and a continuing search for the referent whose neutral and casual tone will be considered uncompromising in its manliness. Mate has become a very general term, for both an intimate friend and a fellow worker or associate.
Confidant compares with crony in suggesting an exchange of gossip as the staple of a friendship. Where crony more commonly refers to a man’s male friend , however, confidant refers often to a woman’s female companion . A further implication suggests that the talk exchanged between confidants is not so much reminiscence as personal secrets.
• Over the years, her cleaning woman became her most trusted confidant.

SEE: accomplice, assistant, associate.
ANTONYMS: antagonist, opponent.
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更新时间:2025/7/29 15:12:47