fair-weather friend
2
5.6
- noun
- /ˈfɛrˌwɛðər frɛnd/
- Informal
:
amigo de conveniencia
- She realized that he was a fair-weather friend when he was nowhere to be found during her difficult times.
You can only be a fair weather friend for so long before people get wise to IT.
- You can only be a fair weather friend for so long before people get wise to IT.
Examples
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Somewhat of a fair-weather friend, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Blog text (18) -
I'm not like those so- called... fair-weather friends of yours.
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You can only be a fair weather friend for so long before people get wise to IT.
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I'm your fair weather friend, honey.
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And promise yourself you will never be that kind of fair-weather friend.
Blog text (12) -
Well, some are fair-weather friends.
Blog text (2) -
I'm glad you were not only a fair-weather friend.
Blog text (8) -
The walkout quickly revealed the president to be a fair-weather friend.
Academic text (2003) -
Or are you a fair-weather friend that would go right back to being a sassy man-hater if your current relationship ever soured?
Blog text (4) -
Here's hoping President Obama's newfound acceptance of the partisan divide has also wised him up to the fact that the deficit hawks are fair-weather friends who stabbed him in the back.
Blog text (4)
Antonyms
How Loyal
Surface Forms
Morphology
fair-weather + friend
The meaning is directly derivable from the parts: 'fair-weather' (= good/pleasant weather) suggests favourable circumstances, combined with 'friend' yields 'a friend present only in good times.' This compositional, metaphorical but transparent pattern is cross-linguistically common and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
Fair-weather friend comes from a simple weather picture: a fair-weather person is only around in sunshine and runs away when storms come, so a friend like that is there in 'good times' but not in 'bad times'.