Meaning & use
comrade
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Meanings
nouncountable
A close friend or fellow member of a group who shares hardships or a common aim.
Grammar: Countable: a comrade, comrades.
Patterns
- a comrade in arms
- a comrade of someone
He wept at the funeral of an old army comrade.
The two hikers became comrades after the long storm.
She thanked her comrades for standing by her through the strike.
nouncountablespecialist
A title used among socialists and communists when addressing or naming one another.
Grammar: Often a title before a name: Comrade Lopez.
Patterns
- Comrade + name
The delegates addressed each other as comrade at the party congress.
Comrade Petrov was invited to speak first.
Word forms
| plural | comrades |
|---|
Common combinations
- comrade in arms
- The veteran greeted his comrade in arms after forty years.
- a trusted comrade
- A trusted comrade covered for him during the retreat.
- fallen comrades
- The ceremony honored fallen comrades.
- old comrade
- He met an old comrade from the factory days.
- fellow comrade
- A fellow comrade handed her the banner.
Synonyms and how they differ
- companion
- Companion simply means someone who spends time with you, while comrade implies shared hardship or purpose.
- colleague
- Colleague is a professional word for someone you work with, with no sense of struggle.
- ally
- Ally stresses a partnership against a common opponent, whereas comrade adds personal loyalty.
Opposites
Word family
- comradeship noun
- friendship formed through shared experience
- comradely adjective
- friendly in the manner of comrades
- comradery noun
- a variant of camaraderie
Commonly confused: comrade or camaraderie?
comrade vs camaraderie
Camaraderie is the friendly feeling between comrades, not the person.
Practice
Which sentence uses comrade in its most common non-political sense?
Choose one answer.
A comrade is a companion in hardship, such as a fellow soldier. The other sentences treat it as an object or a weather event.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “comrade”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.