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Thursday, January 18, 2007

False Friends

A short article in Uncle John's Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader reminded me about false friends, which are words in one language that resemble words in another language but that have different meanings.

For example, "kill" in mideastern languages (not sure which) means "friend"; "pies" in Polish means "dog"; "king" in Estonian means "shoe."

For more information, Wikipedia has a fine article about the subject and also an extremely extensive list of false friends.

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