false friend

Definition

A word in a language that bears a deceptive resemblance to a word in another language but in fact has a different meaning.

Etymology

Calque of French faux-ami, from the longer phrase faux amis du traducteur (“false friends of a translator”), first used by Maxime Kœssler and Jules Derocquigny in 1928 in their book Les Faux Amis ou les trahisons du vocabulaire anglais (False Friends, or the Pitfalls of the English Vocabulary).

Example Sentences

• "A word and its false friend may well be etymologically related: in such cases semantic shifts have made them drift apart."

Related Words