Lately, wherever I go I keep hearing the term bromance being used and it made me wonder, what on earth is a bromance?
I began my search by going to the source I always use for a word I don’t know: the dictionary. Merriam Webster dictionary online is always a good source for new words, but as expected, the word bromance was not one listed. It came back with the following suggestions though: pyromancy, Bramante, bromine, bromelain, pronounce, brominate, prominence, permanence, Brahman, Bournemouth, Bremen, Berryman, barman, Ubermensch, Brownian, Birman, Brennan, Bernanke, pyromania. None of those are the world bromance, so I continued my search to two much less accurate search tools, but things that were more likely to include a definition, wikipedia and urban dictionary.
The first one to load was wiki. Wiki says:
Bromance: man-crush” is a close but non-sexual relationship between two men, a form of homosocial intimacy.[1] Coined in the 1990s, the term has historically referred to a relationship between heterosexuals, but the term has gained currency in describing such relationships when one of the men is gay.
This definition is definitely effective, but didn’t truly give me a good definition, so I continued to Urban Dictionary and found their definition:
Bromance: Describes the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males.
This definition was pretty good, but I still felt like I needed field data, so I asked people from facebook what they thought was a bromance and got some interesting answers.
The first answer was from Ryan Rones and he said:
When two male heterosexual friends can be found doing things that one would do with the member of the opposite sex. Examples : Going to Dinner, Going to the movies or fraternizing on the phone.
I have to say I liked his definition. Mere seconds later I got a second answer from Kyle Spar who said:
Don’t worry your little head about this ross i got your answer. Speaking from experience of coarse a bromance is a relationship between one bro and his other bro. It’s on a serious level that if one bro needed anything that the other bro would be there no matter what. there is no sexual pun there either lol strictly heterosexual.
I thought at that point I was satisfied and then my dad chimed in with his definition:
It’s like Butch and Sundance, or Matt Damon and Ben Aflack, George Clooney and whoever he is co-starring with….get what I mean?
Anyways, I hope this gives you a clear idea of what a bromance is.
Ross