childhood friend
27
1.0
- noun
- /ˈtʃaɪldhʊd frɛnd/
:
amigo de la infancia
- I have known my childhood friend since we were both five years old.
If you think about it, all of my childhood friends are dead.
- If you think about it, all of my childhood friends are dead.
- In hindsight, it looked just like my boyfriend's childhood friend's car.
- And when she goes into the basement, it is one of her childhood friends chained up in the basement.
- I'll take this one because again, this is all this is like meeting a childhood friend only to find out that he's like a crack addict now and like homeless.
- Maybe this is a surprise to Seth, but at this point, I'm going to turn the show over to Evan to ask Seth a question that only a close a childhood friend could know.
- One of my childhood friends committed suicide when I was in college, the summer between my junior and senior year.
- And, you know, family and childhood friends and stuff and he's never there.
Examples
-
Two childhood friends, grown men nearing fifty, meet by accident in Paris in April 1981.
Academic text (2000) -
The return address was from Billy Carp, a childhood friend of mine who still lived in Brooklyn, where I'd grown up.
Fiction book (2000) -
If you think about it, all of my childhood friends are dead.
-
These two were childhood friends, and like everybody else, were trying to figure out a way to make it big and get rich.
-
"Usually your childhood friends are the best, the people you grow up with.
Fiction book (1991) -
So now we're sitting here with a long time childhood friend, Ian.
-
The following story is about my childhood friend Amber and the loss of a close relationship.
Fiction book (1998) -
Many of my childhood friends came, and I labored to be honest.
Fiction book (1991) -
A mysterious letter has prompted a woman to visit her childhood friend, Usher.
Blog text (21) -
This is my dad's childhood friend, Clive Stewart.
Synonyms
1
8.1
A friend you have known for a long time, often since childhood
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a person known since early childhood' is directly and compositionally derived from combining 'childhood' (the early life stage) with 'friend' (a person with mutual affection). This straightforward noun–noun/compound pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows normal English composition, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand it.
Etymology
Childhood friend creates the image of two kids playing together. The word childhood is the time when you were a child and friend is someone close, so it means 'a person you have known since early childhood'.