Other forms: friendships
Friendship is the bond between friends. A long friendship, strike up a friendship, the end of a friendship.
It is voluntary, which is what makes it different from family, and it has no formal beginning or end — friendships are made and lost without ceremony, which is why losing one is so hard to name. Research on wellbeing finds close friendships among the strongest predictors of a long life. Note the -ship ending, meaning the state of, as in hardship and kinship.
1nounfriendshipThe bond between friends.
“Their friendship began on the first day of school.”
friendship is a personal bond.
Old English freondsciepe is friend plus -ship, the ending meaning a state or condition. Friend comes from a verb meaning to love, and is related to free.
Proto-West Germanic
*friundskapi
Old English
frēondsċiepe
Middle English
frendshipe
English, today
friendship
From Middle English frendshipe, from Old English frēondsċiepe, from Proto-West Germanic friundskapi. Equivalent to friend + -ship.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA