friending

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of adding another person as a contact on a social network.

   Friending has replaced the slow build of getting to know someone.

   Workplace friending raises tricky questions about privacy and boundaries.

   Note

   Internet vocabulary, and usually a mass noun naming the practice in general. It can also count single acts. John Ellsworth's Unspeakable Prayers (2015) lists "Facebook friendings" beside exchanged phone numbers and emails as the tokens of a farewell. Once the word counts acts, it takes the plural friendings, and a platform name often goes in front of it.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of friend.

   Friending coworkers can blur the line between personal and professional life.

   The platform makes friending other users quick and almost effortless.

   Note

   Here the word belongs to a transitive verb, so it takes an object: friending old classmates, friending coworkers. After a form of be it builds the progressive (she was friending everyone from the conference). Standing alone it names the activity as a gerund. The verb once meant to befriend or help, but that use is obsolete. Today the form means adding someone on a social network, close kin to the noun for a single add.

3. 3
   nounobsoleteuncountable

   A sentiment of friendship felt toward another person.

   And what so poor a man as Hamlet is May do t'express his love and friending to you.

   c. 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”

   Note

   An old name for the warmth itself, not for any act of making friends. Hamlet offers "love and friending," pairing the word with love as a near equal, in a play Shakespeare wrote around 1600. The sense is long obsolete. In modern writing the feeling is better called friendship or friendliness, since the same spelling now suggests adding someone online.

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