This is a list of words that occur in both the English language and the Spanish language, but which have different meanings and/or pronunciations in each language. Such words are called interlingual homographs.[1] [2] Homographs are two or more words that have the same written form.
This list includes only homographs that are written precisely the same in English and Spanish: They have the same spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word dividers, etc. It excludes proper nouns and words that have different diacritics (e.g., invasion/invasión, pâté/paté).
The words below are categorised based on their relationship: cognates, false cognates, false friends, and modern loanwords. Cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. False cognates are words in different languages that seem to be cognates because they look similar and may even have similar meanings, but which do not share a common ancestor. False friends do share a common ancestor, but even though they look alike or sound similar, they differ significantly in meaning. Loanwords are words that are adopted from one language into another. Since this article is about homographs, the loanwords listed here are written the same not only in English and Spanish, but also in the language that the word came from.
Many of the words in the list are Latin cognates. Because Spanish is a Romance language (which means it evolved from Latin), many of its words are either inherited from Latin or derive from Latin words. Although English is a Germanic language, it, too, incorporates thousands of Latinate words that are related to words in Spanish.[3] Yet even with so many Latin cognates, only a small minority are written precisely the same in both languages.
Even though the words in this list are written the same in both languages, none of them are pronounced the same—not even the word no.
The cognates in the table below share meanings in English and Spanish, but have different pronunciation.
Some words entered Middle English and Early Modern Spanish indirectly and at different times. For example, a Latinate word might enter English by way of Old French, but enter Spanish directly from Latin. Such differences can introduce changes in spelling and meaning.
Although most of the cognates have at least one meaning shared by English and Spanish, they can have other meanings that are not shared. A word might also be used in different contexts in each language.
See also: Arabic language influence on the Spanish language and List of English words of Arabic origin.
See also: List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin.
See also: Outline of German expressions in English.
See also: English words of Greek origin.
All of the following Greek cognates are nouns. In addition, gas and gases are verbs in English.
See also: Latin influence in English.
All of the following words are adjectives and/or nouns.
All of the following words are adjectives and/or nouns.
See also: Māori influence on New Zealand English.
See also: List of Spanish words of Nahuatl origin.
See also: Proto-Indo-European language.
See also: List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin and Quechuan languages.
See also: List of English words of Russian origin.
See also: Sinhalese language.
See also: Taíno language and List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin.
See also: Old Tupi and List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin.
See also: List of English words of Turkic origin.
See also: Wolof language and List of English words of Niger-Congo origin.
Although the words in this section are written identically in English and Spanish, they have different meanings in each language, and they are not cognates.
The table below lists English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English loanwords, as well as loanwords from other modern languages that share the same orthography in both English and Spanish. In some cases, the common orthography resulted because a word entered the Spanish lexicon via English. These loanwords may retain spelling conventions that are foreign to Spanish (as in whisky). In Spanish, only loanwords use the letters k and w.
All of the following loanwords are either nouns or gerunds. Words ending in -ing are gerunds in English and nouns in Spanish.