unfriended

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of unfriend.

   After the heated thread, she unfriended everyone who had piled on.

   He was unfriended by half his contacts following the scandal.

   Note

   Two verbs share this form: a rare one meaning to sever as friends, and the familiar one meaning to remove someone from a friends list online. One spelling covers past and participle alike: she unfriended him, she has unfriended him, he was unfriended. The passive is where confusion lurks. He was unfriended by half his contacts is the verb, while a lonely, unfriended man is the adjective meaning friendless.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having no friends; friendless and without companions.

   Like a stranger in a town where not a single door opens to welcome them.

   The unfriended traveler wandered the unfamiliar streets with no one to greet him.

   Orphaned and unfriended, the young man relied entirely on the kindness of strangers.

   Similarfriendless, alone, solitary

   Note

   The adjective belongs to a nineteenth-century voice of solitude, at home in reviews and sermons. The London Quarterly Review of 1857 speaks of "the unfriended Turner," and Leopold John Bernays's sermon Havelock, the Good Soldier (1858) doubles it as "alone and unfriended." That pairing is its natural company. The same spelling now also serves the social-media verb, so it reads most clearly before a noun or beside alone.

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