Two words which have the same (or similar) form and meaning in two different languages are called what?

• A. Cognate
• B. Borrowing
• C. Calque
• D. False friend

Answer: (A)

When two words in different languages share a similar form and carry the same meaning because they come from a common ancestor, they are cognates. This connection comes from shared etymology: the words originated in the same parent language and then evolved in each language, often keeping recognizable sounds and meanings along the way. That shared origin is what makes cognates feel familiar across languages, helping learners spot related vocabulary.

This differs from a borrowed word, which is imported from another language into your own and adapted to fit its sound system, sometimes preserving meaning but not because of a shared ancestral root. A calque is a different phenomenon altogether: a phrase translated literally from one language into another, preserving the structural meaning rather than borrowing a single word. False friends are words that look or sound similar across languages but have different meanings, which can mislead you if you assume sameness.

So cognates are the words that feel related across languages precisely because they descend from the same linguistic source and retain similar meaning and form.