Noun

(en noun)

One of the two persons from whom one is immediately biologically descended; a mother or father.

My twin sister says she loves our parents , but honestly, I dislike them .

* c. 1595 , (William Shakespeare), The Tempest , First Folio 1623, I.2:

my trust / Like a good parent , did beget of him / A falsehood in it's contrarie, as great / As my trust was, which had indeede no limit, / A confidence sans bound.

*

And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see? His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind [...].

* 2005 , Siobhan O'Neill, The Guardian , 24 Aug 2005:

The NHS is naturally pro-immunisation, reassuring parents that their babies can easily cope with these jabs.

A person who acts as a parent in rearing a child; a step-parent or adoptive parent.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=(Joseph Stiglitz)

, volume=188, issue=26, page=19, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Globalisation is about taxes too , passage=It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. […] It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child's life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries.}}

(obsolete) A relative.

The source or origin of something.

* 1785 , (Thomas Jefferson), Notes on the State of Virginia :

Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry.

(biology) An organism from which a plant or animal is immediately biologically descended.

(label) Sponsor, supporter, owner, protector.

*{{quote-book, year=1944, author=(w)

, title= The Three Corpse Trick, section=chapter 5 , passage=The dinghy was trailing astern at the end of its painter, and Merrion looked at it as he passed. He saw that it was a battered-looking affair of the prahm type, with a blunt snout, and like the parent ship, had recently been painted a vivid green.}}

# A parent company.

#* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=68, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= T time , passage=The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them

(computing) The object from which a child or derived object is descended; a node superior to another node.

Noun

(en noun)

A person other than a family member, spouse or lover whose company one enjoys and towards whom one feels affection.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1 , passage=However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame. At the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence.}}

A boyfriend or girlfriend.

An associate who provides assistance.

A person with whom one is vaguely or indirectly acquainted

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-21, author=(Oliver Burkeman)

, volume=189, issue=2, page=27, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= The tao of tech , passage=The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about […], or offering services that let you "stay up to date with what your friends are doing",

A person who backs or supports something.

(informal) An object or idea that can be used for good.

(colloquial, ironic, used only in the vocative) Used as a form of address when warning someone.

(computing, programming) In object-oriented programming, a function or class granted special access to the private and protected members of another class.

* 1991 , Tom Swan, Learning C++

But don't take the following sections as an endorsement of friends'. Top C++ programmers avoid using ' friends unless absolutely necessary.

* 2001 , Stephen Prata, C++ primer plus

In that case, the function needn't (and shouldn't) be a friend .

* 2008 , D S Malik, C++ Programming: From Problem Analysis to Program Design

To make a function be a friend to a class, the reserved word friend precedes the function prototype

(obsolete) A paramour of either sex.

(Shakespeare)