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There are two terms used for pairs of words (in the same or different languages) that look similar but are actually unrelated: false friend and false cognate. Are these terms synonymous? If not, what's the difference?

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up vote 16 down vote accepted

They are distinct.




True cognates, true friends

Words with a common etymology and modern form and meaning. These are extremely numerous, of course.

True cognates, false friends

Words with a common etymology but which have shifted to have different meanings.

False cognates, true friends

Words etymologically unrelated that nevertheless now have similar meanings (typically by coincidence, but sometimes by influence/reinforcement).

False cognates, false friends

These are completely unrelated words that happen to look similar:


  • Reinforcement and language contact. In the case of false cognates/true friends, if the two languages are in contact, or it occurs within a single language), the similar meanings tend to reinforce each other. They will possibly even be re-analyzed as forms of the same word, thereby merging the lexemes.
  • False recent cognates that are true cognates more distantly. Example: Malay nama 'name' might look like a loanword from English name (Malaya was a British colony), but it is actually an older loanword from Sanskrit (cognate to the English via Proto-Indo-European).
  • Re-analysis: false-cognate words may have their spelling altered to match the form of a true friend in the other language. English examples: indict, victuals, from French but with elided Latin consonants re-added. Spelling and pronunciation are borrowed via different paths, so the spelling could be considered cognate though the pronunciation is not. (In this case, both are more distantly cognate via Latin; the French words were sound-changed.)
  • Calques or loan-translations: the form of the word is cognate, but its components are often not. Example: Latin insecta, Ancient Greek ἔντομον 'insect', from different roots meaning 'cut'
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A model answer! More like this one please! (-: – hippietrail Sep 25 '12 at 4:54

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