Quote:
Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel
"faux frères" (false brothers : we use this to mean words in different languages which look alike so you expect them to have the same meaning, but they don't. like "troubled" and "troublé".) (hey, a bonus untranslateable word for you...  ) |
We Anglophonic word nerds use the term "
false friends" for that. That leads me down another side alley, though:
contronyms or auto-antonyms.
That article gives many English examples, but concludes with this:
"Auto-antonyms also exist in other languages. For example, in French hôte may mean either "host" or "guest", and in Hindi कल (kal, IPA: [kʌl]) may mean either "yesterday" or "tomorrow" (disambiguated by the verb in the sentence)."
So, sure, why not... let's expand the thread to cover those, too.