False friends: the words that look familiar and lie

A false friend is a word that looks like one you know and means something else. They are the price of the enormous shortcut cognates give you — and because they arrive wearing a familiar face, context almost never warns you. Each list below is verified, glossed with the real meaning, and paired with the word you were reaching for.

Why warnings alone don't work

Everyone who learns Spanish is told about embarazada, and plenty of them still say it. Reading a list builds recognition, not retrieval — under the mild pressure of a real conversation the familiar-looking word arrives first. What fixes it is meeting the trap while you are busy doing something else.

That is what Trap Doors is for: false friends are mixed into ordinary cognate drills, unannounced, so you have to notice them yourself. It is free and needs no account.

Where false friends come from

Shared root, drifted meaning. Spanish éxito and English exit both descend from Latin exitus; one kept the going out, the other the outcome.
Borrowed at different times. Polish aktualny took the Latin sense of “current” that English actual abandoned.
Pure coincidence. Norwegian fart (speed) shares nothing with the English word beyond four letters.

Play Trap Doors free Learn the cognate patterns