An Acquaintance In Need Is An Acquaintance Indeed!

As much as I love the merry old whore that is the English language, it does have the occasional deficiency. As Cephelogenic points out, there is a very awkward and glaring lack of terminology for those in that nebulous area between the intimacy of "friends" and the stiff formality of "acquaintances."

I would add as a subgroup of that online friends, including many of you, dear readers. There are people that I know only online that I definitely consider true friends, but there are also people I hesitate to presume to put such an intimate label on, but whom "acquaintance," again, just seems so unwieldy. And there definitely needs to be a word for whatever most Facebook "friends" are. "Random people from high school I want to make sure are doing worse than I am" is a bit long.