Word.ws English Dictionary

false friends

false friends is the plural of false friend.

Meaning of false friend

Noun

false friend (plural false friends)

  1. 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.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see false, friend.

Questions about false friends

What is false friends the plural of?
False friends is the plural of false friend.

Words near false friends in the dictionary

  1. false flax oil
  2. false flax oils
  3. false foxglove
  4. false foxgloves
  5. false friend
  6. false friends
  7. false fruit
  8. false fruits
  9. false galena
  10. false gavial
  11. false gavials

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: false friends (page history and authors); false friend (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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Cite this entry: “false friends.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/false_friends. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.