Category:False friends

This category may eventually contain many of the words known as faux amis to students of French - which means 'false friends' in English. A false friend is a word in one language that seems identical to a word in the other language, but has a different meaning. See also AWE's separate article False friend.

• As an example of this basic meaning of false friend in this linguistic sense, the translation of the French verb demander in English is 'ask', NOT 'to demand', which in English contains the meaning of 'as of right', 'with authority', or 'from strength' as well as the French meaning, which is equivalent to the neutral 'request'.
• Other types of false friends which have moved from this most common form include
  • misleading similarities such as that between the French noun actualités ('news', as in wireless and TV programmes) and the English 'actual';