cognat
French, noun
cognat is spelled C-O-G-N-A-T (6 letters) and appears about once in every 17 million words in written French, the 135,114th most frequent French word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Cognat is a French masculine noun meaning “cognate” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). With an accent, cognât is a different word: “third-person singular imperfect subjunctive of cogner”. The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “Celui qui fait partie d’une famille par la naissance, par opposition à celui qui en fait partie par adoption”.
What does cognat mean in English?
noun
- 1
masculinecognate
verb
- 1
third-person singular imperfect subjunctive of cogner
Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How French dictionaries define it
noun: 1. Celui qui fait partie d’une famille par la naissance, par opposition à celui qui en fait partie par adoption. 2. Mot d’une langue ayant la même origine qu’un autre mot appartenant à une autre langue.
The definition in the French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), in French.
Source: French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
Forms of cognat
- cognats plural
- cognate feminine
Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
English words that translate to cognat
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is cognat in French?
cognat appears about once in every 17 million words in written French.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).