Fun with cognates

[cassielfsw]

As a language geek, this is the type of thing I sometimes like to amuse myself with, and now I'm going to inflict it on share it with you guys, because this is probably the only setting where anyone would be interested in this. 

There are several German words whose English cognates have a more specific meaning than the original word.

German 'sterben' to die ---> English 'starve' to die from hunger
German 'Tier' animal ---> English 'deer' a specific animal
German 'Hund' dog ---> English 'hound' a specific type of dog
German 'Bein' leg ---> English 'bone' part of your skeleton (i.e., the thing that's in your leg) -- this one seems to be an interesting case because according to my dictionary it means both 'leg' and 'bone' in German 

That's all I've got. Does anyone else know any other cognates like that or cognates that are interesting for any other reason? 

[Mackenzie1970]

Hey cassie,

how about this one?

German 'Relief' from visual arts -> English 'relief' to ease (e.g., the pain or the tension)

Words like these are misleading, at least for me - before I look them up in the dictionary.

[tiorthan]

You have different categories of similarities here.

What cassielfsw has listed are cognates. A cognate is a word that is historically related to another word but they don't have to sound alike.
Your example is a false friend. A word that sounds or looks similar to another but has a completely different meaning and do not have to be related at all.

Interestingly, the word relief has two meanings in English and the other is almost exactly the same as the German Relief.

[Mackenzie1970]

Thanks for enlightening me, mein Lieber.

'Relief' was just the first word that crossed my mind. How would you denote my example?

[tiorthan]

As I said, this is called a false friend.

[Mackenzie1970]

Oops, it had escaped my notice that the answer was already there.

Then I'm out. It's not easy to make a distinction between cognates and false friends or false enemies.