What does the English phrase "fence building" mean?
Ex. usage: "You're gonna have to do some fence building.", which, from the context I heard it in (relationships between friends), seems to have the sense that of "repairing wrongs one has done to another." Is that correct?
Best Answer
The phrase has an evolving history. Its origins lie in the idiom "good fences make good neighbors", which is to say when you draw the lines in a relationship clearly then the involved parties are less likely to accidentally violate the expected rules.
This is still a pretty common idiom, however, "mending fences" or its derivative "fence building" has a somewhat different meaning. These expressions rather mean repairing broken relationships. This may be by re-establishing boundaries, but not necessarily, it specifically means re-establishing the relationship.
The idiom is a little misleading, what you are rebuilding is the relationship rather than the tool that facilitated the relationship, however idioms and etymology are not an exact science.
See this interesting article:
Mending Fences
Here is Wiktionary on the phrase itself.
Wiktionary