The Origins Of “Frenemy”
Think the word “frenemy” originates with “Sex and the City“? Wrong! Like many witty coinages, it comes from the Mitford sisters. One of that gang, the writer Jessica Mitford, in 1977 wrote a classic piece about “frenemies”: click here to enjoy it. I’m enjoying the work of the last surviving Mitford gal lately. I’m speaking, of course, about 90-year-old Deborah, known to her friends as “Debo,” known to the world as the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Debo has two new books about: “Home to Roost, and other peckings,” a collection of occasional jottings; and “A Tearing Haste,” a collection of letters exchanged with the travel writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor. Both volumes make ideal bed-side or loo-side reading.
