Why this word is great
FRATERNIZE — [Verb] To associate with others in a brotherly or friendly manner, implying a close or confidential bond, and carrying the specific, graver sense of forbidden association with an enemy. From French fraterniser, from Medieval Latin frāternizāre, ultimately from Latin frāter (“brother”). Unlike “socialize,” which implies casual, permissible mingling, or “collaborate,” which denotes a shared, formal purpose, to fraternize is to forge a pact of personal affinity that can breach necessary boundaries. It is the shared cigarette and murmured conversation between sentries on a cold border night; the easy laughter over a campfire that momentarily dissolves rank; the quiet coffee that forgets the bars between guard and inmate. A word that measures the dangerous, human warmth of connection against the cold geometry of duty.