Word.ws English Dictionary

false cognate

false cognate noun: a word that appears to be cognate (etymologically related) to another given word, but in fact is not.

Noun

false cognate (plural false cognates)

  1. A word that appears to be cognate (etymologically related) to another given word, but in fact is not.
    • 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...2015, Donna Spangler, John Alex Mazzante, Using Reading to Teach a World Language, →ISBN, page 34
    • I don't speak Chinese, but "Mama" is a false cognate, means the same thing in English, Swahili, Navajo--2011, Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, “Motherland”, in Y: The Last Man: The Deluxe Edition Book 5, page 36
  2. (proscribed) A false friend: a word that appears to have the same meaning as another given word, but in fact does not (without regard to whether or not the two terms are cognate).
    • 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, […]2010, Gregory M. Shreve, Erik Angelone, Translation and Cognition, →ISBN, page 324

Examples of false cognate in a sentence

  • False cognates are words in different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots.2015, Donna Spangler, John Alex Mazzante, Using Reading to Teach a World Language, →ISBN, page 34:
  • 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.2012, Pedro J. Chamizo-Domínguez, Semantics and Pragmatics of False Friends, →ISBN, page 3:

Forms of false cognate

pluralfalse cognates

Questions about false cognate

What does false cognate mean?
False cognate means a word that appears to be cognate (etymologically related) to another given word, but in fact is not.
How do you use false cognate in a sentence?
False cognates are words in different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots.
What part of speech is false cognate?
False cognate is a noun.
What is the plural of false cognate?
The plural of false cognate is false cognates.

Words near false cognate in the dictionary

  1. false cause
  2. false ceiling
  3. false chanterelle
  4. false chanterelles
  5. false cirrus
  6. false cognate
  7. false cognates
  8. false colour
  9. false colours
  10. false conception
  11. false conceptions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: false cognate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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