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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

frenemy.

Someone who has traits of an enemy and a friend.

7 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈfɹɛ.nɪ.mi/
  1. Someone who has traits of an enemy and a friend.

    humorous · sometimes
  2. A fair-weather friend who is also a rival.

    humorous · sometimes
Where this word comes from

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).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.