FRENCH

False friends in French

70 words that look like an English word and mean something else. Every one of them can turn up in the daily game, sitting next to the right answer and hoping you are in a hurry.

The list

Read a row as: what you want to say, the word that says it, and the trap. Most traps are a word that looks like the English one and means something else. A few are the word another region would use, which is worse, because it is not wrong anywhere except here.

• actually en fait actuellement = currently
• bed lit lait = milk
• blood sang cent = a hundred
• bookshop librairie bibliothèque = a library
• chair chaise chair = flesh
• change monnaie argent = money
• coin pièce coin = a corner
• corner coin pièce = a coin or a room
• country pays payer = to pay
• currently actuellement en fait = actually
• deadline délai retard = a delay
• dinner jacket smoking fumer = to smoke
• drink boire poisson = a fish
• egg œuf œil = an eye
• eventually finalement éventuellement = possibly
• eye œil œuf = an egg
• field champ chant = singing
• fish poisson boisson = a drink
• flesh chair chaise = a chair
• glass verre vert = green
• grape raisin pamplemousse = a grapefruit
• grapefruit pamplemousse raisin = a grape
• green vert verre = a glass
• hair cheveu cheval = a horse
• horse cheval cheveu = a hair
• hundred cent sang = blood
• jogging footing basket = a trainer
• lecture conférence lecture = reading
• library bibliothèque librairie = a bookshop
• luxury luxe luxure = lust
• middle school collège université = a university
• milk lait lit = a bed
• mother mère mer = the sea
• novel roman nouvelle = a short story
• pain douleur pain = bread
• possibly éventuellement finalement = eventually
• reading lecture conférence = a lecture
• sea mer mère = a mother
• sensible sensé sensible = sensitive
• sensitive sensible sensé = sensible
• short story nouvelle roman = a novel
• song chanson champ = a field
• to achieve réussir achever = to finish off
• to ask demander exiger = to demand
• to attend assister attendre = to wait
• to bless bénir blesser = to injure
• to claim prétendre faire semblant = to pretend
• to come venir vendre = to sell
• to deceive tromper décevoir = to disappoint
• to demand exiger demander = to ask
• to disappoint décevoir tromper = to deceive
• to finish off achever réussir = to succeed
• to injure blesser bénir = to bless
• to pay payer pays = a country
• to pretend faire semblant prétendre = to claim
• to prevent empêcher prévenir = to warn
• to put up with supporter soutenir = to support
• to rest se reposer rester = to stay
• to resume reprendre résumer = to summarise
• to sell vendre venir = to come
• to smoke fumer smoking = a dinner jacket
• to stay rester se reposer = to rest
• to summarise résumer reprendre = to resume
• to support soutenir supporter = to put up with
• to wait attendre assister = to attend
• to warn prévenir empêcher = to prevent
• trainer basket footing = jogging
• wheat blé blanc = white
• white blanc blé = wheat
• wide large grand = big

How this list was built

These are not scraped. Each pair starts from a dictionary export, gets screened against a corpus frequency table so that nothing obscure survives, and is then read by a person, one row at a time, before it ships. A false friend is only listed once someone has written down what the look-alike actually means, and the app refuses to start if any of them is missing that line.

Everything here targets French (fr-FR) specifically. That matters more than it sounds: a word can be perfectly correct in one region and still be the wrong answer here.

The other languages

Italian false friends, European Portuguese false friends, Latin American Spanish false friends.

Want to be tested on them instead of reading them? There is a new French game every day, the same one for everyone, and one wrong tap ends it.