Is your BFF your BSF?
An analysis
Over the past couple of years, I’ve seen more and more people online refer to their best friend as their BSF. But we obviously already have an internet-friendly shortened form of best friend: BFF. So I decided to be absolutely ridiculous and do an analysis of this change in terminology to satisfy my own curiosity
Definitions
BFF is an abbreviation of ‘best friend forever.’
BSF is an abbreviation of ‘best friend.’ Urban Dictionary says it’s also used as an abbreviation for ‘best sister friend,’ meaning a friend that’s as close as a sister. I’m not disputing that being one meaning, but I would confidently assert that it’s not the most common. BSF also has other, completely unrelated, meanings such as ‘bible study fellowship’ and ‘border security force’ - these additional meanings will be relevant later.
Also, let’s be specific about some terminology while we’re here.
According to the Oxford definitions, an acronym is ‘an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word,’ e.g. NASA or NATO. An abbreviation is ‘a shortened form of a word or phrase,’ e.g. Mr. or BBC. BBC is also an initialism which is ‘an abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced separately.’
So neither BFF or BSF are acronyms. Both are abbreviations and BFF is also an initialism.
The best friend problem
Abbreviating best friend has always been a problem and was always going to be a problem. You want to shorten it because it’s long to type out, especially for something that could reasonably be typed often. But the abbreviation can’t be ‘BF’ (the natural abbreviation) because that already means ‘boyfriend’.
I’ve never been a fan of BFF as the accepted abbreviation and have never and would never use it. When I read ‘BFF’ typed out, in my head I read ‘best friend forever.’ I would never type ‘BFF’ because that would be as if I was saying ‘I’m going with my best friend forever’ or ‘It’s my best friend forever’s birthday.’ And that’s just not the intended meaning I want to be read. I would never refer to someone out loud as my ‘best friend forever’ (cheesy, clunky, cringe) so why would I type it? BSF eschews the strict initialism of the best friend/boyfriend problem, allowing it to be read as a shortened version of just ‘best friend’ without the awkward extra ‘forever’ tagged on at the end.
Origins
BFF
According to yourdictionary.com:
The phrase “best friends forever” can likely be traced back to the 1980s. However, BFF was popularized in 1997 when the character Phoebe Buffay said it in season 3, episode 25 of the hit show Friends. It was added to the New Oxford American Dictionary in 2010.
This is, until recently, the only abbreviation of ‘best friend’ I was aware of. And remains, in my mind, the main one.
BSF
Dictionary.com defined BSF in 2018, showing that it was in common-ish parlance even then, citing a tweet from October 2018 and saying, ‘BSF for best friend is recorded by at least December 2009 on Twitter. Since then, it has peppered social media posts about one’s closest comrades.’
It has definitely seen an increase in usage corresponding with the increase in usage of TikTok in recent years. I also tend to see it more frequently used by younger internet users. I would posit that for some young people, BSF is just the abbreviation they learnt through it being more common in their particular online circles, therefore became the one they naturally used and that’s how it became more common to see. I imagine some of the said young people see ‘BFF’ as outdated and just wouldn’t use it, in the way that I wouldn’t say ‘totes’ instead of ‘very’ — it’s outdated wording that has just never been relevant to me.
Google Trends data
I took to Google Trends to compare the interest over time for both ‘BFF’ and ‘BSF’ as search terms. For BSF I excluded the words ‘bible,’ ‘study,’ ‘fellowship,’ ‘border, ‘security’ and ‘force’ in an attempt to exclude searches for other meanings of BSF.
The interest in ‘BFF’ peaked in March 2018. and the interest in ‘BSF’ peaked in August 2022 which was also the only time in recent years the search interest in BSF was higher than that of BFF. This happened twice prior, once in February 2011 and once in September 2014. They were equal in December 2022.
Interestingly, in August 2023, the interest in both search terms was almost equal, before BSF dropped lower again in September (at the time of writing we have not yet reached the end of September).
The trends show a closer search interest over the last year than was shown in the previous few years.
My extremely scientifically rigorous research survey
I posted a poll on my Instagram story, asking ‘Which of these means ‘best friend’ to you?’ with the option to select either BSF or BFF.
Given that all the responders were going to be people I know personally, I expected people would opt for BFF (as that’s what I would go for) so I made BSF the first option. The thought behind this was in the hope that responders wouldn’t opt for their initial reaction straight away without reading the alternative.
It’s important to note that my Instagram account is private and I have hidden my story from all but 120-ish people so the sample was never going to be huge or random or representative of wider populations.
I got 53 responses, 100% of which identified BFF as the abbreviation that means ‘best friend’ to them.
Most who responded were women; most in their 20s; most from the UK. Fewer than you might assume from that fit all those categories, but many do.
So the conclusion I can draw from that is: people I know, most of whom share similar characteristics with me, universally identified BFF over BSF.
I texted two young people
I decided to cast the net wider than my initial search. I texted two of my cousins. Both female, both live in Scotland, one aged 20 and the other 15. I thought if anyone I know is going to opt for the BSF option, it will be younger girls who use the internet and who know about online trends (both do).
Here are the questions I asked and the answers I received:
Do you know what ‘bsf’ and ‘bff’ mean?
15: yes
20: I think so and yes
Do you ever use either ‘bsf’ or ‘bff’?
15: no
20: I would say bff only in a sarcastic manner and never the other one
Do your friends ever use ‘bsf’ or ‘bff’?
15: no
20: same as above
So, turns out expanding the age range didn’t sway the results any more in favour of BSF.
Conclusion
Google Trends data appears to suggest that the usage of BSF may be catching up with BFF, which is definitely something I’ve seen reflected online. However, BFF is universally the most commonly identified abbreviation for ‘best friend’ amongst the people I know in real life, and even the younger people I know don’t use BSF.
I, on the other hand, am fully in support of BSF and am quite glad there’s finally a better shortening of ‘best friend’ that doesn’t mean we are, if read fully, referring to a ’best friend forever.’ BSF is quicker, it’s neater, and it just makes more sense.