frenemy
Someone who has traits of an enemy and a friendSomeone who has traits of an enemy and a friend.
» Tom is our frenemy.
soliloquist · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
2 senses(humorous, sometimes)Someone who has traits of an enemy and a friend.
заклятый друг
(humorous, sometimes)A fair-weather friend who is also a rival.
Examples
2 sentencesTom is our frenemy.
I can't believe she did that to me - she turned out to be a real frenemy.
Translations
4 languagesOrigin
Blend of friend + enemy. Invented independently multiple times. Attested in 1952 without aBlend 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: frenemiesWord family
4 related wordsSee also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.