Friendsgiving
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In case you've encountered this portmanteau, and wonder about its history, Merriam-Webster has you covered And NPR's Word of the Week featured it last week — Rachel Treisman, "Friendsgiving 101: A history of the made-up holiday and how to celebrate it", 11/19/2025:
Thanksgiving is always the fourth Thursday of November. But many Americans don't wait that long to share a fall feast with their loved ones — that is, if they celebrate Friendsgiving.
Friendsgiving is exactly what it sounds like: A gathering close to the date of Thanksgiving, starring many of its starchy staples, usually served potluck-style, with friends instead of relatives.
Think fewer dinner-table political debates, less travel time, turkey optional (more on that later).
Merriam-Webster started tracking "Friendsgiving" in 2007, after it appeared in posts on what was then Twitter and the early message board Usenet. The word's obvious meaning and accessible pronunciation helped it catch on quickly, Brewster says.
"Friendsgiving" popped up in lifestyle blogs and news articles over the years before hitting it big in 2011. That year, it was both the focus of a Bailey's Irish Cream ad campaign and a major plot point in a Real Housewives of New Jersey episode (titled "Gobblefellas").
Wiktionary's entry dates to 2012, if I'm reading its history page correctly, and now cites the NPR/MW episode.
The OED hasn't registered it yet, despite its thousands of media citations, a fair number of uses in books, and plenty of social media hits.
Yesterday Merriam-Webster posted this on Bluesky:
On December 4, 2007, in the Usenet group “Friends of the Friendless,” someone wrote:
“Happy Friendsgiving Y’all!”And that is the first recorded use of ‘Friendsgiving’ in print.
— Merriam-Webster (@merriam-webster.com) November 25, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Daphne Preston-Kendal said,
November 27, 2025 @ 8:05 am
That Merriam-Webster bleat is an excellent quotation for the use of ‘in print’ for text appearing online and not on an actual printed page.
I’ll let someone else take the glory of submitting it to the OED. Just don’t forget to invite me to the Word Induction Ceremony.
Mark Liberman said,
November 27, 2025 @ 9:38 am
@Daphne Preston-Kendal "That Merriam-Webster bleat":
I'm used to seeing skeet for the Bluesky analog of tweet, but bleat is much better, even though it's got "ea" instead of "ee".
J.W. Brewer said,
November 27, 2025 @ 12:00 pm
Merriam-Webster also has a twitter/x account which posted the identical text at I assume around the same time and for all I know on some other social-media platform(s) as well. I guess you can attribute the quote to any of the multiple venues it appeared in, although I always wonder when I see a given lexicographic citation attributed to a story in some very specific newspaper like the Bloomington Pantagraph or whatever but it's clear that what's being quoted is from an AP wire story that ran nearly simultaneously in many other places.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
November 27, 2025 @ 1:02 pm
Friendsgiving is exactly what it sounds like: — You mean, the giving of friends?
Guy D. Plunkett III said,
November 27, 2025 @ 2:57 pm
This tradition dates back to at least 1975 when in grad school — no one was going anywhere for a four day weekend, if we even got that. So we would gather, with the host(s) providing a location and the turkey, and everyone else bringing sides, wine, etc. But we always called it "Orphans' Thanksgiving." A couple of the core families from that group continue the tradition to this day.
Philip Anderson said,
November 27, 2025 @ 3:20 pm
Are any of the references to “friendsgiving” from Britain? I’ve not heard the word, although Thanksgiving is well-known here as an American custom. I have been invited to “Thanksgiving” events here, by American friends, although not on a Thursday; I guess they would meet the definition given above, but why invent a new word?
Bob Ladd said,
November 27, 2025 @ 5:18 pm
This is sort of in reply to both Guy Plunkett and Philip Anderson:
At least since the mid-1970s, Americans associated with Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh have organised a cooperative Thanksgiving dinner. The tradition was going when I got here and is still going strong. My impression is that this kind of thing is pretty common anywhere where there are groups of Americans in other countries. But I've never heard the word ""friendsgiving", here or anywhere else. It's just Thanksgiving, even if you haven't got the free time to do it properly on the correct Thursday (we had ours here last Sunday).
J.W. Brewer said,
November 27, 2025 @ 5:21 pm
One thing the NPR piece doesn't get at which is in my experience fairly important to the phenomenon is this: a) in the U.S. many youngish people who no longer live most of the time where they grew up (because they're off at college/grad-school or have taken a job in some other place) but do not yet have spouses/children of their own will travel back to their parents' houses for a three-to-five-day period at Thanksgiving; (b) many of their old friends who grew up in the same place but now also live elsewhere (and many different elsewheres, not all the same one) are likewise back temporarily at their own parents' houses at the same time; so (c) there is both motive and opportunity for the young people to get back together with their pre-dispersion group of friends at some point over the long weekend in an organized way, but necessarily at a different time than that when everyone is ritualistically eating with their own families.
peng said,
November 27, 2025 @ 7:58 pm
Philip,
I would assume that in a place where 'normal' Thanksgiving is not celebrated en masse, people do not need an extra word. But in the US or Canada, it is helpful to differentiate if you are talking about 'the traditional gathering occurring on the actual holiday' or if you are talking about 'a themed get-together with friends occurring sometime near the holiday'.
As a separate thought, I find it interesting that NPR specifies "usually served potluck-style". Even in my own home growing up, regular Thanksgiving was always something of a potluck – most was made in-house, but anyone coming from somewhere else was expected to contribute.
Lawrence said,
November 28, 2025 @ 4:57 am
J.W. Brewer's account sounds like an astute analysis of Friendsgivings of the kind discussed here, a gathering near-but-not-on-Thanksgiving organized by a small group of friends… but I would have said that Friendsgiving is an event held on Thanksgiving, as a potluck, for queer folks who are not welcome at their familial meal gatherings. I picture a large "open house" type event, perhaps with a full day of activities planned, perhaps hosted by a community organization. Certainly, that was the tenor of the Friendsgivings I attended in the late aughts; I'm fairly sure we did call them "Friendsgiving" and not just something like "Gay Thanksgiving"… If Friendsgivings are no longer on Thanksgiving Thursday, perhaps that's a positive sign that the Thanksgiving table has grown more welcoming.
Misha Schutt said,
November 28, 2025 @ 6:10 am
This looks like an opportunity to plug one of my favorite recent reads.
The Dictionary of Lost Words, a lovely novel by Australian writer Pip Williams. The protagonist is named Esmé, and she starts out in the 1870s as the little daughter of the editor of the original Oxford English Dictionary. She spends her toddler days under the table in the editing room, and gradually blossoms into a gatherer of women’s words that don’t make their way into the dictionary because they don’t appear in print. There’s lots of period detail, plus of course a love story with one of the typesetters. I wept three times in the course of it.
Michael Vnuk said,
November 28, 2025 @ 6:15 am
Friendsgiving sounds like what people do around Christmas: they have lots of celebrations and get-togethers with friends and work colleagues, but these events don't have a separate name, as far as I am aware.
And Jarek Werkwerth's comment is spot-on.
Misha Schutt said,
November 28, 2025 @ 6:41 am
There's also barksgiving (aka pupsgiving). Cont figure out how to paste a Facebook search result)
David Morris said,
November 28, 2025 @ 6:46 am
Black Friday has entered Australia, but not Thanksgiving or any other -giving. Yesterday I saw a shop advertising Black November. (Previous Black Friday in Australia meant bushfires, mostly in 1939.)
Tom said,
November 29, 2025 @ 4:50 pm
Bluesky users send out "bleats"? LOL. I think they wouldn't appreciate that.
Philip Anderson said,
November 30, 2025 @ 12:00 pm
@peng
I did wonder about that, whether it was a term used by people who celebrate separately with family and friends. But as Michael Vnuk says, we have Christmas parties and dinners that are distinct from the main family gathering. Although Christmas has long been a season rather than a one day celebration, and a communal event.