English Dictionary

false cognate

noun

A word which is identical or similar in both form and meaning to another word, and therefore appears to also be cognate (etymologically related) to it, but which is in fact unrelated.

The word 'actual' in English is a false cognate.

意味（1）

A word which is identical or similar in both form and meaning to another word, and therefore appears to also be cognate (etymologically related) to it, but which is in fact unrelated.

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 interchangeably by some teachers[. ... Learn to] recognize false cognates, which are pairs of words in different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots.

意味（2）

A word that appears identical or similar in form to another word, but is both unrelated in its meaning and of unrelated origin.

Conversely, the Italian word cazzo [cock, penis] and the Spanish word cazo [ladle, small saucepan] would be false friends and false cognates inasmuch as their respective meanings are different; additionally, there is not any etymological … common root for both words. 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.

意味（3）

(proscribed) A false friend, a word that appears to have the same meaning as a given word, but that 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, […]