What is a French word meaning false or fake?
False friend friends in those languages as well as in Greek, where it started out as 'a place for naked exercise'. False friends, or bilingual homophones are words in two or more languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. The origin of the term is as a shortened version of the expression "false friend of a translator", the English translation of a French expression () introduced by linguists Maxime Kœssler and Jules Derocquigny in their 1928 book, "False Friends, or the Pitfalls of the English Vocabulary" ("Les Faux Amis ou les trahisons du vocabulaire anglais") with a sequel,
False friend distance", quoted in 1721.) The Estonian and Finnish languages are closely related, which gives rise to false friends: Or Estonian "vaimu" (spirit; ghost) and Finnish "vaimo" (wife), ; or Estonian "huvitav" (interesting) and Finnish "huvittava" (amusing). A high level of lexical similarity exists between German and Dutch, but shifts in meaning of words with a shared etymology have in some instances resulted in 'bi-directional false friends': The Italian word "confetti" (sugared almonds) has acquired a new meaning in English, French and Dutch; in Italian, the corresponding word is "coriandoli". English and Spanish, both of which have borrowed from Greek and