befriend

1. (transitive) To become a friend of, to make friends with.Examples: "1854, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, p. 143. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me."; "Befriending one of the 112 managing directors was not enough; you had to befriend a managing director with clout. There was one small problem, of course. Bosses were not always eager to befriend trainees."; ""We had a professional relationship, whereas the previous vicar was a friend and had befriended me." "Were you available to befriend people? You said it in a passive voice, as though others befriended you."transitive

2. (transitive, dated) To act as a friend to, to assist.Examples: "Brother servants must always befriend one another."; "an Irish section boss, whose wife (my mother having befriended her years before when first she and her husband came to Sullivan) had now, at the time my mother was compelled to make this return pilgrimage, befriended us by letting us stay - mother and us three youngsters - until she could find a house."; "This particular trainer who had repeatedly befriended "Willie" in many other ways, left the circus for a short time and upon returning to the lot approached him, thinking "Willie" would remember him"datedtransitive

3. (transitive) To favor.Examples: "If it will please Caesar / To be so good to Caesar, as to hear me, / I shall beseech him to befriend himself."; "Now if your plots be ripe, you are befriended / With opportunity."; "Be thou the first true merit to befriend; / His praise is lost, who stays till all commend."transitive