Learn English – the antonym of “to friend”

antonymsverbsword-request

The verb to friend is used for making friends in social nets connecting people with similar interests. What is the antonym, the negative verb, meaning to delete somebody from your "friends"? What's the correct prefix? I found different versions on the Internet.

Best Answer

You're looking for unfriend.

unfriend
to remove (someone) from a list of designated friends on a person's social networking Web site

And apparently, defriend works too.

defriend
unfriend

I've also heard people use the words delete and remove.

  1. I deleted him from (my) Facebook/my friends list.
  2. I removed him from (my) Facebook/my friends list.

All of these options seem correct. They are all understandable.


I had a feeling unfriend was more popular than defriend because I do not often hear or read about people "defriending" one another. Thank you to @AndreaGottardo for providing additional information using Google Trends.

Google Trends comparison of unfriend and defriend

In the above graph, unfriend is blue while defriend is red.