Noun

Singular friendship

Plural countable and uncountable; plural friendships

friendship (countable and uncountable; plural friendships)

1. (uncountable) The condition of being friends.
2. (countable) A friendly relationship.
3. (uncountable) Good will.

Related terms

• unconditional

Friendship is the cooperative and supportive relationship between people. In this sense, the term connotes a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, affection, and respect along with a degree of rendering service to friends in times of need or crisis. Friends will welcome each other's company and exhibit loyalty towards each other, often to the point of altruism. Their tastes will usually be similar and may converge, and they will share enjoyable activities. They will also engage in mutually helping behavior, such as the exchange of advice and the sharing of hardship. A friend is someone who may often demonstrate reciprocating and reflective behaviors. Yet for some, the practical execution of friendship is little more than the trust that someone will not harm them.

Value that is found in friendships is often the result of a friend demonstrating the following on a consistent basis:

• the tendency to desire what is best for the other
• sympathy and empathy
• honesty, perhaps in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth, especially in terms of pointing out the perceived faults of one's counterpart
• mutual understanding

In a comparison of personal relationships, friendship is considered to be closer than association, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and associations. Friendship and association can be thought of as spanning across the same continuum. The study of friendship is included in sociology, social psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and zoology. Various theories of friendship have been proposed, among which are social exchange theory, equity theory, relational dialectics, and attachment styles.

Friendship is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more people. It can be taken to mean a supportive relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection.

Contents

• 1 Sourced
  • 1.1 Old friends
  • 1.2 Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
• 2 Unsourced
• 3 See also
• 4 External links

Sourced

• The blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
  • Dinah Craik, in A Life for a Life (1859)
  • Since the 1930s this has also been published in many paraphrased forms, often uncredited to Craik, including: A friend is one To whom one may pour out all The contents of one's heart Chaff and grain, together, Knowing that the gentlest of hands Will take and sift it, Keep what's worth keeping And blow the rest away.

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Sun Jan 10 00:02:19 2010