Meaning

2 senses
  1. (humorous, sometimes)Someone who has traits of an enemy and a friend.

    заклятый друг

  2. (humorous, sometimes)A fair-weather friend who is also a rival.

Examples

2 sentences
  1. Tom is our frenemy.

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  2. I can't believe she did that to me - she turned out to be a real frenemy.

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Translations

4 languages
Русский
Someone who has traits of an enemy and a friend:

Origin

Blend of friend + enemy. Invented independently multiple times. Attested in 1952 without a

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).

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

plural: frenemies
Singularfrenemy
Pluralfrenemies

regular

Word family

4 related words

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
frenemy — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto