AN ETYMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT FRIENDSHIP
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70728/Keywords:
friendship; etymology; historical-comparative linguistics; Old English; Proto-Germanic; semantic change; social semantic.Abstract
This article presents a comparative etymological study of the lexeme friend and the broader conceptual field of “friendship.” Using historical-comparative linguistic methods and a targeted literature/corpus review, the paper traces the development of the English term from Old English through Proto-Germanic and to its Indo-European antecedents, and situates that lineage alongside analogous lexical developments in other Indo-European languages (e.g., Latin amicus, Greek philos, German Freund). Results show a recurring pattern: roots denoting affection, favor, or kinship gradually lexicalized into terms for voluntary social bonds; over time, social and cultural processes (Christianization, urbanization, individualism, and digital social media) expanded and reshaped the semantic range of “friendship.” The analysis highlights the tight historical connection between love/affection and friendship in lexical origin, and argues that semantic shifts reflect both linguistic inheritance and socio-cultural change. The paper concludes by proposing avenues for corpus-based diachronic semantic quantification and cross-cultural comparisons of friendship vocabularies
References
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