Clay Shirky's posted a fine rant on RELATIONSHIP, a controlled vocabulary of terms for describing personal relationships (i.e. friendOf, acquaintanceOf, parentOf, siblingOf, childOf, grandchildOf, spouseOf, enemyOf, antagonistOf, ambivalentOf, lostContactWith, knowsOf, wouldLikeToKnow, knowsInPassing, knowsByReputation, closeFriendOf, hasMet, worksWith, colleagueOf, collaboratesWith, employerOf, employedBy, mentorOf, apprenticeTo, livesWith, neighborOf, grandparentOf, lifePartnerOf, engagedTo, ancestorOf, descendantOf, participantIn, participant):
Take the relationship closePersonalFriendOf. The designers of this list somehow overlooked it, possibly on the grounds that it's tautological, and only of use on talk shows. ("Oh yes, Julia Roberts is a close personal friend of mine.") But it is nevertheless informative — you would only use closePersonalFriendOf if the person in question was someone of relatively high fame or station.
In addition, anyone claiming to be a "close personal friend" of someone else is talking about a domain where a high degree of social interaction is the norm, e.g. show business. By extension, the seemingly oxymoronic friendYouDontLike is also a valid category, as anyone in highly social environments can tell you. (You often run into friendsYouDontLike at partiesYouHaveToGoTo.)
