befriend

verb

1. (also, figuratively, transitive)To become a friend of (someone), to make friends with (someone).

   “Good Seruilius, vvill you befriend mee ſo farre, as to vſe mine ovvne vvords to him?”

   “[…] I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, […] Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me.”

   “This particular trainer who had repeatedly befriended "Willie" [an elephant] in many other ways, left the circus for a short time and upon returning to the lot approached him, thinking "Willie" would remember him. As he drew near "Willie" knocked him down and wrapped his trunk around his body. Only the intervention of the entire menagerie force saved him.”

   “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.”

2. (transitive)To act as a friend to (someone, especially a client) by providing companionship and support; to assist, to help.

   “[B]e ſure employ ſome of the Servants to hold the Horſe vvhen your Maſter mounts. This I vvould have you do, vvhen your Maſter only alights, to call in for a fevv Minutes: For Brother-ſervants muſt alvvays befriend one another, and that alſo concerns your Maſter's Honour; becauſe he cannot do leſs than give a Piece of Money to him vvho holds his Horſe.”

   “[O]ne house, a red one, occupied by 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.”

   “All [Benito] Mussolini's life is contradiction. He fled to Switzerland to escape military service, and there was befriended by the revolutionary, Angelica Balabanoff, who, pitying him in his misery and loneliness, befriended him, helping him translate a German pamphlet because he did not know the language.”

   “The social worker very clearly befriends the families with whom she works, and the GP becomes a friend to many of his patients.”

3. (figuratively, transitive)To benefit or favour (someone or something); also, to advocate or promote (someone or something).

   “Hence therefore, euery leader to his charge, / For on their anſvvere vvill vve ſet on them, / And God befriend vs as our cauſe is juſt.”

   “Sooth[sayer]. […] [I]f it vvill pleaſe Cæſar / To be ſo good to Cæſar, as to heare me: / I ſhall beſeech him to befriend himſelfe. / Por[tia]. VVhy knovv'ſt thou any harme's intended tovvards him?”

   “Thy vſurie, extorting, racking, incloſing, hath vvounded vvhole Villages, and novv thou befriendeſt tvvo or three vvith the plaiſters of thy bountie.”

   “Hovv greatly befriendeth he vs, that keepeth our houſe from falling, that vnderproppeth it vvith great cunning, and vpholdeth it in the aire, being cleft and vvinde-ſhaken from the very foundation: […]”

   “Novv if your plots be ripe, you are befriended / With opportunity; […]”