false friend
/ˌfɒls ˈfɹɛnd/
"false-friend" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“false friend” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A word in a language that bears a deceptive resemblance to a word in another language but in fact has a different meaning.
Corpus desk
Index EN-false-friend · false friend · English
false friend · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "F" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | false friend |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˌfɒls ˈfɹɛnd/ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “false friend” in English
Rare enough to double-check
false friend is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˌfɒls ˈfɹɛnd/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for false friend, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: Calque of French faux-ami, from the longer phrase faux amis du traducteur (“false friends of a translator”), first used by Maxime Kœssler and Jules Derocquigny in 1928 in their book Les Faux Amis ou les trahisons du vocabulaire anglais (False Friends, or th… The correct English form is false friend, spelled F-A-L-S-E- -F-R-I-E-N-D.
Definition
- 1A word in a language that bears a deceptive resemblance to a word in another language but in fact has a different meaning.
- 2Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see false, friend.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how false friend appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
A word and its false friend may well be etymologically related: in such cases semantic shifts have made them drift apart.
Etymology
Calque of French faux-ami, from the longer phrase faux amis du traducteur (“false friends of a translator”), first used by Maxime Kœssler and Jules Derocquigny in 1928 in their book Les Faux Amis ou les trahisons du vocabulaire anglais (False Friends, or the Pitfalls of the English Vocabulary).
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.