false friend

English

WOTD – 4 May 2007

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).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌfɒls ˈfɹɛnd/, /ˌfɔːls ˈfɹɛnd/
• IPA^(key): /ˌfɔls ˈfɹɛnd/, /ˌfɑls ˈfɹɛnd/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Audio (AU):

  (file)

Noun

false friend (plural false friends)

Examples
The Spanish embarazado (“pregnant”) and English embarrassed. The Chinese 手紙／手纸 (shǒuzhǐ, “toilet paper”) and Japanese 手紙 (“letter”), both of which are composed of the same characters. The Italian triviale (“vulgar”) and English trivial. The two words are cognate through the Latin root trivium (“crossroads”).

1. (linguistics, translation studies, lexicography) A word in a language that bears a deceptive resemblance to a word in another language but in fact has a different meaning.

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

   Synonym: faux ami

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see false,‎ friend.

Hyponyms

• partial false friend

Descendants

• → Chinese: 假朋友 (jiǎpéngyou), 假友 (jiǎyǒu), 偽友／伪友 (wěiyǒu) (calque)

Translations

type of word

• Arabic: أشباه النظائر m pl (ashbāho nnaẓā-ir)
• Catalan: fals amic m
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 偽友／伪友 (wěiyǒu), 伪友 (wěiyǒu), 假友 (jiǎyǒu), 假等義／假等义 (jiǎděngyì), 假等义 (jiǎděngyì), 假朋友 (jiǎpéngyǒu), 同形异义词 (tóxíngyìyìcí)

• Danish: falsk ven
• Dutch: valse vriend m
• Esperanto: falsa amiko
• Finnish: petollinen ystävä (fi), väärä ystävä, sekaannussana (fi)
• French: faux-ami (fr) m
• Galician: falso amigo m
• German: falscher Freund (de) m, Übersetzungsfalle f
• Greek: ψευδόφιλος (el) f (psevdófilos)
• Hindi: झूठा दोस्त (jhūṭhā dost), झूठे दोस्त pl (jhūṭhe dost)
• Hungarian: hamis barát (hu), álbarát (hu)
• Icelandic: falsvinir m pl, svikatengsl n pl
• Indonesian: teman palsu
• Interlingua: false amico
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Irish: cara bréige m
• Italian: falso amico (it) m
• Japanese: 偽りの友 (いつわりのとも, itsuwari no tomo)
• Korean: 거짓 친구 (geojit chin'gu)
• Latin: falsus amicus m
• Latvian: viltusdraugs m
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: falsk venn (no) m

  Nynorsk: falsk ven m, falsk venn m

• Persian: please add this translation if you can
• Polish: fałszywy przyjaciel (pl) m pers
• Portuguese: falso amigo (pt) m, heterossemântico (pt) m
• Romanian: prieten fals m
• Russian: ло́жный друг (ru) m (lóžnyj drug)
• Slovene: lažni prijatelj m
• Spanish: falso amigo (es) m
• Swedish: falsk vän (sv) c

See also

• cognate
• false cognate