friend·ship (fr nd sh p )n. 1. The quality or condition of being friends. 2. A friendly relationship: formed many new friendships over the summer. 3. Friendliness; good will: a policy of friendship toward other nations. |
Friendship
See Also: LOVE, SOCIABILITY
- An acquaintanceship, if all goes well, can linger in the memory like an appealing chord of music, while a friendship, or even a friendship that deteriorates into an enemyship, so to put it, is like a whole symphony, even if the music is frequently unacceptable, broken, loud, and in other ways painful to hear —William Saroyan
- Became like old friends, the kind who can’t leave each other on deathbeds —Thomas McGuane
- Comradeship … burned and flamed like dry straw on fire —Stephen Longstreet
- Early friends drop out, like milk teeth —Graham Greene
- Every man is like the company he won’t keep —Euripides
An ironic twist on, “A man is known by the company he keeps” and, “Tell me the company you keep and I’ll tell you who you are.”
- Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys recorded by art or life —Simone Weil
- Friendship … should, like a well-stocked cellar, be … continually renewed —Samuel Johnson
- A friendship that like love is warm; a love like friendship steady —Thomas Moore
- Friendship with Cape was like climbing a ladder. You had to wait awhile on each rung before he invited you to climb the next —Robert Campbell
- Friends … slipping from his orbit like bees from a jaded flower —Beryl Markham
- He who helps a friend in woe is like a fur coat in the snow —Russian proverb
- I keep my friends as misers do their treasure —Pietro Aretino
Aretino’s simile dating back to the sixteenth century, was followed by this explanation: “Because of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship.”
- Ill company is like a dog who dirts those most whom he loves best —Jonathan Swift
- In their friendship they were like two of a litter that can never play together without leaving traces of tooth and claw, wounding each other in the most sensitive places —Colette
- It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife —Samuel Johnson
- Life without a friend is like life without sun —Spanish proverb
- Life without a friend is death with a vengeance —Thomas Fuller
- Life without a friend is death without a witness —John Ray’s Proverbs
- The light of friendship is like the light of phosphorous, seen plainest when all around is dark —Robert Crowell
- Like old friends they wear well —Slogan, Meyer gloves
- The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired —Robert Southey
- My friendship [with Vita Sackwille-West] is over. Not with a quarrel, not with a bang, but as a ripe fruit falls —Virginia Woolf, March 11, 1935 diary entry
See Also: BEGINNINGS/ENDINGS
- A new friend is like new wine; you do not enjoy drinking it until it has matured —Ben Sira
- A new friend is a new wine —The Holy Bible/Apocrypha
- Their association together possessed a curiously unrelenting quality, like the union of partners in a business rather than the intimacy of friends —Anthony Powell
- Went through our friendships like epsom salts, draining us, no apologies, no regrets —Rosa Guy
- Without a friend the world is a wilderness —John Ray’s Proverbs
Friendship
(See also LOVE.)
close as the bark to the tree Intimate, close; interdependent, symbiotically related, mutually sustaining. The phrase is used particularly of the closeness between husbands and wives. Though occasionally used to indicate physical proximity, the expression usually carries implications that such is indicative of a spiritual or psychological intimacy or dependency.
She would stick as close to Abbot as the bark stuck to the tree. (Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World, 1692)
The “bark and the tree” as symbolic of “husband and wife” was in print as early as the mid-16th century. The analogy assumes that spouses interrelate in the interdependent, mutually nourishing patterns characteristic of the relationship between a tree and its bark. See also go between the bark and the tree, MEDDLESOMENESS.
eat [someone’s] salt To share someone’s food and drink, to partake of someone’s hospitality. Among the ancient Greeks to eat another’s salt was to create a sacred bond of friendship between host and guest. No one who had eaten another’s salt would say anything against him or do him any harm. Salt, as it is used in this phrase, symbolizes hospitality, probably because it once was of considerable value, (cf. the etymology of salary). The first OED citation given for this expression is dated 1382.
hand in glove See CONSPIRACY.
hobnob To be chummy, familiar, or intimate with; also, hob and nob. This expression originated as hab-nab ‘have or have not,’ ‘give or take.’ Shakespeare employed this early sense in Twelfth Night:
He is a devil in private brawl…. Hob, nob, is his word, give’t or take’t. (III, iv)
The ‘give or take’ sense of this expression was subsequently extended to include the exchange of toasts as a sign of comradeship. Consequently, the phrase evolved its contemporary figurative meaning of being on friendly or familiar terms.
It cannot be her interest to hob and nob with Lord Fitzwilliam. (Lady Granville, Letters, 1828)
the mahogany The dining room table, as symbolic of sociability, conviviality, friendship, conversation, etc. This popular 19th-century British colloquial term usually appeared in phrases such as around the mahogany, over the mahogany, or with one’s feet under the mahogany.
I had hoped … to see you three gentlemen … with your legs under the mahogany in my humble parlour. (Charles Dickens, Master Humphrey’s Clock, 1840)
Currently mahogany is a colloquial term for a bar.
From the moment Mr. Primrose appeared behind his own mahogany and superseded the barmaid, he dominated everything. (N. Collins, Trinity Town, 1936)
rub shoulders To mingle or socialize; to hobnob. This expression is derived from the bumping and grazing of bodies against each other at social gatherings. The phrase quite often describes the mingling of persons of diverse background and social status at cocktail parties, political gatherings, and the like.
thick as thieves Intimate, familiar, friendly; close, tight. This expression is thought to derive from the French ils s’entendent comme larrons en foire ‘as thick as thieves at a fair,’ where thick means ‘crowded, densely arranged.’ When at a fair was dropped from the expression, the figurative jump to thick ‘close, intimate’ occurred; Theodore Hook used the truncated form in The Parson’s Daughter (1833):
She and my wife are as thick as thieves, as the proverb goes.
Pickpockets, cutpurses, and their kind frequented fairs and other large gatherings where the prospects of gain and escape were both high.
| Noun | 1. |  friendship - the state of being friends (or friendly)relationship - a state involving mutual dealings between people or parties or countries blood brotherhood - the friendship characteristic of blood brothers companionship, fellowship, society, company - the state of being with someone; "he missed their company"; "he enjoyed the society of his friends" confidence, trust - a trustful relationship; "he took me into his confidence"; "he betrayed their trust" |
friendship
friendliness conflict, hostility, hatred, resentment, strife, animosity, aversion, antagonism, antipathy, enmity, bad blood, unfriendliness
"Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies" [Aristotle]
"Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it" [Cicero De Amicitia]
"Friendship admits of difference of character, as love does that of sex" [Joseph Roux Meditations of a Parish Priest]
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