Meaning of frenemy | Babel Free

Definitions

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

Equivalents

Examples

“Painting with a bland stroke, hardly mixing color on palette or canvas, working neatly, quickly, deftly, and a bit hygienically—like an Old World gentleman—over his “spontaneous” projects—indeed, “tickling” his way along, to borrow frenemy Picasso's devastating verb—he [Henri Matisse] seems never to be deeply involved or even slightly carried away by his work.”

“Another enemy / Not even a frenemy.”

“Frenemies who when you're down ain't your friend”

“In France the Seine has all the advantages of Northernness (a quality underrated by our Gallic frenemy) but it is too fatally interested in Paris […]”

“You know when you dump a guy, only to discover years later that he's evolved into the perfect boyfriend—for the high-school frenemy who convinced you to dump him in the first place...?”

“So why did we break up? Enter Blaize St. John, frenemy extraordinaire. She came, she saw, she stole my boyfriend.”

“Gates made a rare and instructive appearance with his longtime frenemy Steve Jobs.”

“So, we're definitely not going to be friends with Ferguson? Maybe we can be frenemies. A love-hate relationship's the next best thing.”

CEFR level