海角大神

I聽have 194 friends, according to Facebook. That鈥檚 not many, by Facebook standards. In the United States, users have an average of 338, according to the most recent statistics, and the platform caps the number at 5,000. Few of my online friends are friends in real life, though, which dovetails with the research of evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar. Whether a person has 50 Facebook friends or 5,000, Dr. Dunbar has found that 鈥渙nly 15 [count] as actual friends and only five as close friends.鈥� Today you can 鈥渇riend鈥� people with the touch of a key, even if you鈥檝e never met in person.

Etymologically speaking, friendship is much more intense. Friend is an Old English word, derived ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root pri-, meaning 鈥渢o love.鈥� In OE, friend (someone you love) was the opposite of fiend (an enemy, someone you hate).

Many friend words arose from the importance of shared meals. Companion, first used in the 14th century, is literally 鈥渁 person with whom you eat bread,鈥� as it comes from the Latin com (with) plus panis (bread). Mate, another 14th-century term, originally referred to a person sitting next to you at dinner, sharing the main course, meat. Now mate is used more generally to mean 鈥渇riend鈥� (especially in British slang) or 鈥渙ne of a pair鈥� (e.g., the bird鈥檚 mate brings food).

Shared lodging also gave rise to several words. In the 17th century, university students who lived together on campus were called chums, short for 鈥渃hamberfellows鈥� 鈥� what we鈥檇 call roommates. While roommate does not imply anything about how the space-sharers get along, chums are close friends, though the word itself now has an old-fashioned ring to it. Analogously, soldiers who bunked in the same tent were comrades, from the Latin camera (鈥渃丑补尘产别谤鈥�).

Bedfellow marked perhaps the closest kind of friendship. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, beds were scarce, and most people slept next to someone else out of necessity. Because of the intimacy of lying next to someone in the dark, bedfellows often became what we鈥檇 call 鈥渂est friends鈥� today. 鈥淏edfellow鈥� was even a socially recognized category, akin to 鈥減artner.鈥� One family recorded a visit from 鈥渕y Lord of St John鈥檚 bedfellow,鈥� and the Countess of Oxford complained that a social climber had wormed his way into her son鈥檚 affections: 鈥淛ohn Hunt has impudently presumed to be his bedfellow.鈥�

The history of these words draws a picture of friendship as loving and intense, conducted elbow-to-elbow and face-to-face 鈥� pretty much the opposite of what happens on Facebook. While social networks can be valuable tools for communicating with people we love but rarely get to see, I鈥檇 still rather visit with a couple of my chums.