What's wrong with "friend."

May 4, 2010 9:23 AM

When, why, and how did "buddy" become the default word a certain type of guy uses to refer to his friends?

"Yeah, my buddy got season tickets to the Phillies..."

"Some buddies and I were rock climbing, and..."

"A buddy a' mine and I were drinking some beers..."

Why?

I've noticed that a certain type of guy--I"ll call them "bros" as shorthand, but that's a little narrower than I mean, though I do mean the kind of guy who fancies himself a fairly masculine, regular, "laid-back" guy, a casual sports fan with largely homosocial friendships--uses the word "buddy" to the near exclusion of all other terms to refer to his friends. When did this happen, why is this the word of choice now, and what is the origin? I am so mystified.

posted by millipede to Society & Culture (32 answers total)

Here you go.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:27 AM on May 4, 2010

Response by poster: @roomthreeseventeen Yes, that explains why it is a word at all, but it doesn't touch on its current widespread use.
posted by millipede at 9:29 AM on May 4, 2010

This is pure conjecture but I think the word 'friend' is being reserved more and more to denote someone you've known for a long time or share some greater level of closeness than your 'buddies' that you might hang out with. Anything that might have pushed this along would be enlightening to me as well, though.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:33 AM on May 4, 2010

Wild, unsubstantiated speculation:

These "bros" you speak of are the primary target audience for those mooky Super-Bowl-type commercials for cheap domestic beer. AKA Budweiser. See: "This Bud's for you" and "I love you, man." These ads modeled "typical" male relationships and, I'd venture, played a large role in bro culture around the country. I wouldn't blame it all on the beer but I bet it was a significant contributing factor.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 9:34 AM on May 4, 2010

Isn't it predominately only used in the USA these days? Its always 'mate/mates' over here in the UK. not helpful but seems strange when the origin seems to by Uk centric
posted by mary8nne at 9:35 AM on May 4, 2010

I assumed it was an American longing for a word that carried the connotations of the the English "mate", without the the connotations of, you know, mating. I'm curious too. Hopefully someone has more info.
posted by the jam at 9:35 AM on May 4, 2010

Response by poster: @mary8anne. Yes, this is US-based. Sorry for not specifying! I find "mates" much more endearing and charming: Maybe I should move!
posted by millipede at 9:36 AM on May 4, 2010

My experience with buddy is that it's used in a light-hearted sort of way, and friend is reserved for those you are truly friends with (echoing what Space Coyote said above). Not so much now, but in the past it was often used along with an arm around the neck and shoulder as a preface to asking an awkward question along the lines of "Buddy, would you mind helping me move out of my apartment this weekend?"
posted by tommasz at 9:55 AM on May 4, 2010

A common bit of locker-room logic (back when I was in middle school) held that "friends are friends and pals are pals but buddies sleep together".
posted by namewithoutwords at 10:04 AM on May 4, 2010

Isn't it predominately only used in the USA these days? Its always 'mate/mates' over here in the UK.

Canadians side with the USA on this one. "Buddy" is all over the place up here. I've always found it a weirdly infantilizing term, though that might be due to this association.
posted by Beardman at 10:26 AM on May 4, 2010

Buddy is just a more relaxed way of saying acquantance. You wouldn't say your aquaintance got you tickets to the Phillies game (that's one real nice acquaintance btw), but you would say my buddy got me tickets. Friend is for a more formal established relationship.

Buddy can also be replaced with "boy" now. As in "Yea, man, if you want to go to Vegas I can ask my boy if he has any good rates. He works for Hotels.com". Buddies and boys are people in your social network, but not your friends that you would call when you breakup with your girlfriend or something.
posted by WeekendJen at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2010

From my experience it's a white working-class thing that has spread into more general use (much like I suspect 'mate' has done in the UK). As others have noted it doesn't imply close friendship or intimacy which may be the reason why it's become so popular.
posted by otio at 10:43 AM on May 4, 2010

My father and grandfather both say they started using the word in the army. Both say they generalized the term 'war buddies' to other terms like 'golf buddies'. It's a term of endearment for use in places where something more intimate or forthcoming isn't appropriate or warranted, but still recognizes the shared bond.
posted by foobario at 10:43 AM on May 4, 2010

Best answer: Navy Joke: Your buddy is the guy that, when you can't get liberty, goes into town and gets 2 blowjobs, then comes back and gives you one.

An older word that seems to mean something similar is "chum". Falls in there with "pal". It comes to mind because my mind is dirty, and I was thinking of an English sea-chanty that has the line "If you want a bit of bum you better get it from your chum, you won't get no bum from me!".
posted by Goofyy at 10:46 AM on May 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

Friend is too ambiguous (male? female? 'special' friend?).
Pal is too old-fashioned.
Bro and Bra have gone out of style.
Mate is not used in the US and if so, would sound odd to most ears.

Buddy is completely safe -- not corny, not ambiguous -- it connotes a male friend, as well. Sooner or later it will go out of style, but for now it's the word of choice.
posted by whiskeyspider at 11:05 AM on May 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

find "mates" much more endearing and charming

I take "mates" too literally, as in "people I mate with." I thought "buddy" was from when children are small and have buddies.
posted by anniecat at 11:16 AM on May 4, 2010

I blame the economy - Buddy can you spare a dime?
posted by Lanark at 11:18 AM on May 4, 2010

In my experience (Canadian), my buddies are a much closer group than my friends. I have friends at work, and friends among my wife's crowd, but they're not my buddies.
posted by rocket88 at 11:29 AM on May 4, 2010

I'm not your buddy, guy

Maybe that has something to do with a recent rise in popularity?

Canadian here, and I am not a "bro" but I am a guy. I call my friends the following terms:

buddy, friend, dude I know, mate (though I do tend to use this one jokingly, I like to use UK slang just to take the piss out of people though I have never been there).
posted by utsutsu at 11:35 AM on May 4, 2010

I think part of the reason it hovers at the acquaintance level is because "buddy" is also quite often used as a form of address for someone who is most definitely not a friend. Your buddies are folks whom you don't know well enough to be confident that "hey buddy, how's it goin'?" is unlikely to be replaced with "watch it, buddy."
posted by solipsophistocracy at 12:10 PM on May 4, 2010

Amongst my socio-political affinity group (it's complicated), nearly every male uses any of Dude, Bro, Homey, Buddy, and Brudda as a form of personal address nearly interchangeably. Sometimes more than one in the same sentence as in, "Dude-Bro, that's messed up, Buddy." The most common phone greeting is, "Hey, Buddy."

Speaking of people not present there is a kind of continuum from friend to bro to buddy to homey implying varying levels of commitment on the part of the speaker towards the second person which may or may not be reciprocated.

There is also the special case of "Buddy-dude." "Buddy-dude" is used as a placeholder name in a story for someone you don't know as in, "Then Buddy-dude says, 'Hey y'all, watch this!' and starts to climb up the ladder while still holding a beer in each hand and we decided to leave before the cops came."
posted by ob1quixote at 1:02 PM on May 4, 2010

Best answer: I can only offer wildly biased, anecdotal info. "Buddy" is absolutely one of the words that make me instinctively cautious of someone I'm hanging out with and just getting to know. Your description is on target - men calling each other "buddy" is often a dog-whistle for "aw shucks, I'm just one of the guys." To be clearer, it's something like, "we really have no ambitions beyond hanging out, watching the game with some beers, busting each other's balls, and talking about hot girls. If you're different, you're either a woman or you won't fit in this circle." I'll second that this person is typically into golf for some reason [not golf-ist]. I've also had salesmen call me "buddy" when they want to signal with their words and gestures that they're just one of the boys and therefore trustworthy. This usage was probably viral as people subconsciously picked up on the social connotations. I'm pretty sure it's been around for a few decades now.
posted by naju at 1:43 PM on May 4, 2010 [3 favorites]

I read the question and hoped you would call them bros, so well done!

My roommate (at a New England, bro-filled party school) says "buddy" all of the time, and it's weird. It's not a word I use ever.

"My buddy's coming up for the weekend, can he chill in here?"
"One of my buddies got super trashed the other night."

Et cetera. Good question.

The point is, I see it as a closer friend as well, and not an acquaintance.
posted by papayaninja at 2:04 PM on May 4, 2010

Response by poster: Almost everyone's answering the question I didn't ask and to which I already know the answer--I get what the word means and how its users differentiate it from "friend" (when really they mean the same thing). I just don't know how it became this institution. It's everywhere! It drives me nuts! It smacks of purposely casual linguistic laziness as an attempt at coolness. @naju, I too become cautious when someone uses this word. I judge it so harshly--I could never, for instance, see myself successfully dating a guy who says "my buddy" this and "my buddy" that.
posted by millipede at 5:00 PM on May 4, 2010

I say you're beanplating the whole "a certain type of guy" business. It's just a somewhat ambiguous term for people who fall under a certain ambiguous class of relationship. Maybe people you don't really have much in common with besides, oh, the workplace, or a sport, but you still enjoy spending time with and have a perhaps ritualistic recurring experience with. It's a little working class, it's a little juvenile, but it's also being used deliberately for those reasons to some extent.

Proposefully casual, yes. We live in an age of purposeful casualness. I think the word may have increased in usage because we have moved along Bowling Alone style to meetups and amateur leagues and so forth. Heck, we've moved to an era where "friend" is now a verb. "Friends" is a TV show, of a certain archness, and calling people your friends might imply too much of that.

This slang fad, too, shall pass. I would pay it less mind and judge its practitioners less harshly.
posted by dhartung at 8:08 PM on May 4, 2010

Huh. My experience is totally different than naju. I wouldn't mark it as the sole best answer just because it confirms your preconceived suspicions.

I have some platonic guy friends who have called me "buddy." It just seems like a really casual way to say a friend you just get drinks with or hang out with or whatever. Personally I say "pals."
posted by Solon and Thanks at 8:15 PM on May 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Let's blame Facebook[*]. Being a "friend" has a more specific meaning now, which is both a) you're friends in online forums and b) you have the level of intimacy that allows you to be listed as friends there. A lot of the previous answers deal with the difference in the level of intimacy. I think buddy might allow the speaker to either say "this person is more important to me than my 200 'friends.'" Or it also lets the speaker say "I am friendly with this person, but I don't want to be so presumptuous as to say we're 'friends.' Because we're not friends on Facebook or anything yet." Co-workers make good buddies in that way.

[*] Or Myspace. Or Friendster. Or Livejournal. And let's blame AOL and AIM for making us talk about buddies instead of pals.
posted by oreofuchi at 8:56 PM on May 4, 2010

Response by poster: @Solon and Thanks, I marked it as the best answer because it acknowledges that there is a definite type of person that uses this word and a definite type of person who doesn't, which is more in line with what my question asked. I'm talking about people who never say "friend." It's not a hierarchical "this is my friend, and this is my buddy" categorical thing.
posted by millipede at 9:36 PM on May 4, 2010

The internet says some stuff about the origin of the word. And I think it's just one of the words that drifts in and out of vogue--my grandpa used to talk about his "Korean war buddies", and I remember the seeing the same sort of thing in WWII movies.
posted by _cave at 5:32 AM on May 5, 2010

Hmm... I don't know that I'd say there's a definite type of person who uses the word, though. The way that I usually hear the word used, it's more to describe a person who is a friend in a certain context (drinking, golfing, etc).
posted by _cave at 5:34 AM on May 5, 2010

there is a definite type of person that uses this word and a definite type of person who doesn't

It smacks of purposely casual linguistic laziness as an attempt at coolness

I too become cautious when someone uses this word. I judge it so harshly--I could never, for instance, see myself successfully dating a guy who says "my buddy" this and "my buddy" that

I find "mates" much more endearing and charming: Maybe I should move!

You should totally blog about this
posted by poppo at 7:07 AM on May 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

My Dad, who is in his 80s, has always referred to his friends (particularly the ones from his younger, "running around" days as "buddies." In the early 80s I happened to notice that a male co-worker always referred to his friends as "a buddy of mine" when describing his week-end exploits and such. I asked him about it - "how come you never refer to Al as your 'friend'?" He thought for a moment and then shrugged. I don't think he even realized he favored one term over the other. But, anyway, "buddy" has been in use by US men for a looong time.
posted by Oriole Adams at 9:51 AM on May 5, 2010