"false cognate" meaning in English

See false cognate in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: false cognates [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} false cognate (plural false cognates)
  1. A word which is identical or similar in both form and meaning to another word, and therefore appears to also be cognate (etymologically related) to it, but which is in fact unrelated.
    Sense id: en-false_cognate-en-noun-6sytUuk1 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 41 17 41
  2. A word that appears identical or similar in form to another word, but is both unrelated in its meaning and of unrelated origin.
    Sense id: en-false_cognate-en-noun-S9fqyf2K Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 41 17 41
  3. (proscribed) A false friend, a word that appears to have the same meaning as a given word, but that does not (without regard to whether or not the two terms are cognate). Tags: proscribed Related terms: lists of false friends in various languages, false friend
    Sense id: en-false_cognate-en-noun-XAf4AgW- Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 41 17 41

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for false cognate meaning in English (3.8kB)

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      "expansion": "false cognate (plural false cognates)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
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    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "41 17 41",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2015, Donna Spangler, John Alex Mazzante, Using Reading to Teach a World Language, page 34",
          "text": "False cognates are words in different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. They appear to have a common linguistic origin (regardless of meaning) but actually do not. [...] The two terms, \"false cognates\" and \"false friends,\" are sometimes used incorrectly or interchangeably by some teachers[. ... Learn to] recognize false cognates, which are pairs of words in different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, “Motherland”, in Y: The Last Man: The Deluxe Edition Book 5, page 36",
          "text": "I don't speak Chinese, but \"Mama\" is a false cognate, means the same thing in English, Swahili, Navajo--",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
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      "glosses": [
        "A word which is identical or similar in both form and meaning to another word, and therefore appears to also be cognate (etymologically related) to it, but which is in fact unrelated."
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      "id": "en-false_cognate-en-noun-6sytUuk1",
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          "ref": "2012, Pedro J. Chamizo-Domínguez, Semantics and Pragmatics of False Friends, page 3",
          "text": "Conversely, the Italian word cazzo [cock, penis] and the Spanish word cazo [ladle, small saucepan] would be false friends and false cognates inasmuch as their respective meanings are different; additionally, there is not any etymological [...] common root for both words. This makes the set of false friends wider than the set of false cognates, since all false cognates are false friends, but not all false friends are false cognates.",
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        "A word that appears identical or similar in form to another word, but is both unrelated in its meaning and of unrelated origin."
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          "ref": "2010, Gregory M. Shreve, Erik Angelone, Translation and Cognition, page 324",
          "text": "False cognates, on the other hand, are words in two languages that are identical or similar in form and may mislead the bilingual to think that they have the same or similar meaning, while their meaning is actually different, e.g., become-bekommen in English-German, […]",
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        "(proscribed) A false friend, a word that appears to have the same meaning as a given word, but that does not (without regard to whether or not the two terms are cognate)."
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          "_dis1": "39 9 52",
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        {
          "ref": "2015, Donna Spangler, John Alex Mazzante, Using Reading to Teach a World Language, page 34",
          "text": "False cognates are words in different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. They appear to have a common linguistic origin (regardless of meaning) but actually do not. [...] The two terms, \"false cognates\" and \"false friends,\" are sometimes used incorrectly or interchangeably by some teachers[. ... Learn to] recognize false cognates, which are pairs of words in different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots.",
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        {
          "ref": "2011, Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, “Motherland”, in Y: The Last Man: The Deluxe Edition Book 5, page 36",
          "text": "I don't speak Chinese, but \"Mama\" is a false cognate, means the same thing in English, Swahili, Navajo--",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
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        "A word which is identical or similar in both form and meaning to another word, and therefore appears to also be cognate (etymologically related) to it, but which is in fact unrelated."
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      "examples": [
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          "ref": "2012, Pedro J. Chamizo-Domínguez, Semantics and Pragmatics of False Friends, page 3",
          "text": "Conversely, the Italian word cazzo [cock, penis] and the Spanish word cazo [ladle, small saucepan] would be false friends and false cognates inasmuch as their respective meanings are different; additionally, there is not any etymological [...] common root for both words. This makes the set of false friends wider than the set of false cognates, since all false cognates are false friends, but not all false friends are false cognates.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "A word that appears identical or similar in form to another word, but is both unrelated in its meaning and of unrelated origin."
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          "ref": "2010, Gregory M. Shreve, Erik Angelone, Translation and Cognition, page 324",
          "text": "False cognates, on the other hand, are words in two languages that are identical or similar in form and may mislead the bilingual to think that they have the same or similar meaning, while their meaning is actually different, e.g., become-bekommen in English-German, […]",
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        "(proscribed) A false friend, a word that appears to have the same meaning as a given word, but that does not (without regard to whether or not the two terms are cognate)."
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  "wikipedia": [
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  "word": "false cognate"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.