One of the grand, society wide problems (at least in the English speaking world, my experience with other parts is limited) is the way in which people, in an effort to avoid hitting people’s feelings, and to keep things simple for children, have stretched the word ‘friend’ to gloss over important distinctions between different relationships.

In order to avoid hurting people’s feelings, they point at a coworker who they share memes with over the company slack channels and say ‘friend’ even though they never speak outside of those memes, they don’t know anything about each other, and they wouldn’t trust them with anything more meaningful than a meme.

In order to avoid having to explain the difference between different kinds of relationship (which they quite possibly don’t know themselves) to kids, adults point at the kid their kid shares a classroom with and loves like a brother, and the kid who puts their kid through mild physical torture on a nearly daily basis, and calls them both ‘friend.’ How is the kid supposed to acknowledge the difference they have no words for outside of making hand waving gestures How are they supposed to teach their own kids the difference if they don’t learn it?

English has the words friend, buddy, coworker, pal, comrade, ally, mate, classmate, bunkmate, playmate, acquaintance, companion, partner, associate, chum, bro, and more, but because people are too lazy, ignorant, or socially anxious, they all end up as ‘friend.’