The word befriend was being used back in 1559. In all the time since, the opposite hasn’t been needed – until now. What does it say about us?

The word unfriended (meaning ‘friendless’) has been around since Shakespeare’s time and the noun unfriend (meaning ‘enemy’) since the 13th C, but when it comes to the verb ‘to remove a person from your list of friends on a social network’ – something teenagers do when they fall out with each other – there is some debate about whether that word should be unfriend or defriend.

The word friend comes from the Old Germanic frijand, which meant ‘lover, friend’. It’s a synonym for pal, chum, mate, comrade, companion or amigo – any of these you might find in our crosswords.

Shakespeare knew a thing or two about friendship. In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio says:

“Friendship is constant in all things

Save in the office and affairs of love”.

Maybe this is why friends gets defriended on Facebook – rivalry in the office or in affairs of love.

A fair-weather friend is the type who is only around in the good times, and can’t be relied on when life gets difficult, just as a friend in need is a friend indeed – suddenly a friend might be friendly again when in trouble.

A dog is a man’s best friend, but is a man a dog’s best friend? A dog usually loves the person who feeds and walks it, whether it’s a man or a woman. King Frederick the Great of Prussia, who sadly had few friends himself, referred to his Italian greyhound as his best friend. This idea was popularised in a poem by Ogden Nash.

A diamond is a girl’s best friend, sang Marilyn Monroe famously, in the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Yet it was men, not women, who risked their lives to steal diamonds in H Rider Haggard’s adventure story King Solomon’s Mines.

As Nicole Richie says, “True friends are like diamonds – bright, beautiful, valuable, and always in style”.

Happy Puzzling!