Cognates in
linguistics are words that have a common origin. They may occur within a language, such as
shirt and
skirt as two English words descended from the
Proto-Indo-European word
*sker-, meaning "to cut". They may also occur across languages, e.g.
night and
German Nacht as descendants of Proto-Indo-European
*nokt-, "night".
The word cognate derives from Latin cognatus, from co (with) +gnatus, natus, past participle of nasci "to be born".[1] Literally it means "related by blood, having a common ancestor, or related by an analogous nature, character, or function".[2]
The term cognate is not normally used with loanwords. For example, linguists would not say that the English word sushi is cognate to the Japanese word sushi, because the word was borrowed from Japanese into English.
Cognates need not have the same meaning dish (English) and Tisch ("table", German), or starve (English) and sterben ("die", German), or head (English) and chef ("chief, head", French), serve as examples as to how cognate terms may diverge in meaning as languages develop separately, eventually becoming false friends.
