What do you call "Friends"?

Friend is someone you know well and can trust.
buddy is just a person you somewhat know.

There's acquaintance: that means we just met, or have talked only a few times. I may consider them contacts, but not much more.

Friends are people I'd seek out again, and try to either talk to often or see often. That takes at least a few months.
Close friends and life long ones, gotta be trustworthy as well as loyal, and I need to be the same for them.

A tricky one. Fatman's definition has been the closest to my opinions so far, but more as in how do you know someone is your friend and not what makes friend a friend.

I would say that a friend is a person who doesn't want to forget me. Friends form an emotional bond, which results in a thought of losing the other causing discomfort and anxiety. Friends want to support each other and keep in touch, because losing a friend is unbeneficial to oneself, even though there would be no material goods involved.

I suppose if I look at it this way I don't really have any friends then. I have people at college that I have a laugh with and hang around with, but I rarely speak to them outside of college, mainly because we don't share the same interests. I haven't had a "friend" round my house in a while mainly because it will be boring for them. I don't think the world of anime, manga, hentai, games and Japan interests them. I have people in my Japanese class who I talk to but I haven't dived in to make a close bond with them.

I'm fine with that though.

That's what's wrong with the 21st century.

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.

- Karl Menninger

We share some interests or hobbies. Someone who's there to back you up. Dunno, for me it's the same thing as a marriage, except without the wedding ring or sex. We're just "tight" yadda mean?

Looking at the topic title literally, I'd say its a bad 90's sitcom.

Poor humour aside, a friend is someone I trust and enjoy hanging out with.

Anybody who calls me by name, can have a great time with irregardless of time spent, someone that won't hesitate to tell me if I'm wrong or getting out of line, and most of all somebody who I can fully trust.

I agree with pumpjack's definition of friends.

Also there are people that are in your group but you never talk to them. I considered them more like an acquaintance.

Close friends I considered them as buddies.

In my opinion, a friend is someone who helps elevate who you are as a person: they make you feel good about yourself, teaches you things / enlightens you, provides emotional support / gives great advice, or just generally adds some positive experience of some sort to your life. If you are a good friend to them, you will reciprocate the same benefits to enhance their life :)

Friend, dude, dawg, or whatever their name is. Also the nicknames if they have one.

I define a friend as somebody that I see on a fairly regular basis and can spend time with/aroud outside of a scholastic/professional setting. These are the people that I trust almost completely.
A buddy is somebody that I see occasionally and can have a short, passing conversation. I usually only see them in places that are scholastic/professional. These are the people that I am comfortable with but may not trust.
Close friends are ones that are past just being friends that I trust entirely. There's always a multitude of lines of communication between me and my close friends. I'll tell these poeple just about anything and I can ask them for advice when faced with a problem. They know me well enough to tell me what I want to hear when times are tough.
A best friend, for me, is somebody that I can run to when things are falling apart. They're able to put the pieces back together and tell me what I need to hear to get through. They know me as well as , or better than, I know myself. They see past the exterior and know what truly ails me.

a friend to me would be somebody who you've know for a fair amount of time, that they know enough about you and you about them

I have always called people "friends". But those people are the ones I have around me that would stop a bullet heading for my chest. To be my "friend" you have to be my ally or my enemy. Those who are neutral are nothing to me. They might, if given the proper incentive, receive the title "bud".

I consider my friends to be people I can talk to and joke with without feeling strained. Another quality all my friends have is that they don't have insecurity issues about who their real friends are. Most importantly, I could trust all of my friends with anything, from my money and my house to my life.

Now that I think about it, I only have 5 true friends everyone else is a buddy or just an aquaintance(mainly aquaintances).

I consider friends to be the people you can call at any time of day for anything and they'll respond.

Buddies are.... buddies.

I yo life I has learned u only has one friends and dats u

thug life or die early yo

Lately, I've been rethinking this.
I'm drifting from all the people I knew at school that I called "friends" apart from 1.
So my new answer to this thread is people you stay in contact with no matter what happens in your life.

Friends to me are people you are friendly with, have built a history with them, you are the 1st people they will call on to talk to, & you are linked to them directly like say your friend has a friend and you only see your friend's friend when your with your friend and you have hanged out with both of them for years if you don't see that person with out your friend I wouldn't consider that person a friend just a friendly acquittance.

Funny thing about my friends is most of them at first either couldn't stand me or I couldn't stand them and it has taken years for a friendship to be created.

I can't stand people that after you have met them a few times that you are instantly friends.

It's only after school that I've realized I don't know how to be an active friend because I normally would do what ever my friends did, I would only hang out with them when they said lets hang out & I don't know how to approach a friend and get together because every fiber in my body says don't they'll get back to you they normally say when to hang out. I've began to drift away from the people I call friends and only now do I realized how little friends I had/have 3 giving the thing I said about being linked directly to them.