Friend (verb) — Christmas 2017
Posted by on December 30, 2017
Finding proof for the word friend as a verb (other than my SOED) was difficult, but thanks to Megan Garber an article that she wrote for The Atlantic settled this for me (and perhaps a few others). As Megan writes in her (brief) article ‘friend,’ as a Verb, Is 800 Years Old adding, its use as verb is not the construction of FaceBook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. I may add that one day a new verb ‘to zucker may be added to the SOED and those falling prey to a social network scam can be said to have been ‘zuckered’.
“Disorder, that hath spoil’d us, friend us now!”
Henry V, Act 4, Scene 5 (line 19)
Megan also provided the link to 16 words that are much older than they seem, which included ‘friend‘ as a verb. Of course the Constable of France in the above Shakespearian quotation didn’t have access to Facebook – something I thought that I should tell my grandchildren. [To which I might add: “Neither did he tweet that line and there was was a time that your granddad didn’t have access to these social networks either, nor was he at Agincourt with Henry V”.]
