befriend

Etymology

From be- + friend. Compare Saterland Frisian befrüündje (“to befriend”), Dutch bevrienden (“to befriend”), German Low German befründen (“to befriend”), German befreunden (“to befriend”).

verb

1. (transitive) To become a friend of, to make friends with.
   1854, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, p. 143. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me.
   Befriending one of the 112 managing directors was not enough; you had to befriend a managing director with clout. There was one small problem, of course. Bosses were not always eager to befriend trainees. 1989, Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker, page 52
   "We had a professional relationship, whereas the previous vicar was a friend and had befriended me." "Were you available to befriend people? You said it in a passive voice, as though others befriended you. 1999, Jonathan Cole, About Face, page 121
   If you want to befriend the Loner, you have to be willing to show patience as he becomes more comfortable with you and what friendship entails. 2002, Jan Yager, When Friendship Hurts, page 47
   The social worker very clearly befriends the families with whom she works, and the GP becomes a friend to many of his patients. 2005, Philip Burnard, Counselling Skills for Health Professionals, page 2
   Child sexual abusers are highly manipulative in their befriending of parents and children and are able to deceive all types of family. 2006, Christiane Sanderson, Counselling Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, page 17
2. (transitive, dated) To act as a friend to, to assist.
   Brother servants must always befriend one another.
   an Irish section boss, whose wife (my mother having befriended her years before when first she and her husband came to Sullivan) had now, at the time my mother was compelled to make this return pilgrimage, befriended us by letting us stay - mother and us three youngsters - until she could find a house. 1916, Theodore Dreiser, Franklin Booth, A Hoosier Holiday, page 417
   This particular trainer who had repeatedly befriended "Willie" in many other ways, left the circus for a short time and upon returning to the lot approached him, thinking "Willie" would remember him 1937 May, Popular Mechanics, volume 67, number 5, page 676
   He fled to Switzerland to escape military service, and there was befriended by the revolutionary, Angelica Balabanoff, who, pitying him in his misery and loneliness, befriended him, helping him translate a German pamphlet because he did not know the language. 1939, Philip Lindsay, A Mirror for Ruffians, page 353
3. (transitive) To favor.