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army1987 comments on False Friends and Tone Policing - Less Wrong Discussion

45 Post author: palladias 18 June 2014 06:20PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 18 June 2014 07:00:39PM 22 points [-]

false cognate (or, as the French would say, false friend)

<nitpick>Technically, false cognates are words that look as though they are etymologically related but actually aren't, whereas false friends are words that look like they mean the same but actually don't. For example, English have and Spanish haber are false cognates but true friends, and English preservative and Spanish preservativo are true cognates but false friends.</nitpick>

Comment author: palladias 18 June 2014 07:08:21PM 8 points [-]

Neat! I wasn't aware of this distinction. My French teacher just told us the French word for "false cognate" was "faux amis"

Comment author: sediment 29 June 2014 07:56:46PM 1 point [-]

Does that make the pair autological, in some sense?