Un falso amigo es una palabra de otro idioma que se parece, en la escritura o en la pronunciación, a una palabra de la lengua materna del hablante, pero que tiene un significado diferente. El propio término «falso amigo» es un calco semántico del francés faux-ami, y fue usado por primera vez por Koessler y Derocquigny en su libro Les faux-amis ou les trahisons du vocabulaire anglais (‘Los falsos amigos o las traiciones del vocabulario inglés’) de 1928. Normalmente, los falsos amigos son cognados, y excepcionalmente pueden ser falsos cognados. Muchos falsos amigos se deben a una etimología común que ha derivado en significados distintos en cada lengua. Los estudiantes de idiomas suelen ser víctimas de las confusiones que producen los llamados falsos amigos. Un caso especial, habitual en estos últimos tiempos, sobre todo en los medios de comunicación, es el uso erróneo de palabras tradicionales del español con su sentido de otro idioma. Podemos citar «bizarro» tomando el significado de ‘extraño’, ‘estrambótico’ o ‘grotesco’ cuando lo que realmente quiere decir «bizarro» en castellano, es ‘valiente’. Usando el significado de «bizarro» directamente del término inglés bizarre, tomado a su vez del francés y este del gascón, variedad del occitano.

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False friends are words in two languages (or letters in two alphabets) that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. An example is the English embarrassed and the Spanish embarazada (which means pregnant), or the word sensible, which means reasonable in English, but sensitive in French, German and Spanish. The term is a shortened version of the expression "false friend of a translator", the French version of which (faux amis du traducteur) was introduced by linguists Maxime Kœssler and Jules Derocquigny in 1928, in the book Les Faux Amis ou les trahisons du vocabulaire anglais (False Friends, or the Pitfalls of the English Vocabulary, with a sequel, Autres Mots anglais perfides). There is often a partial overlap in meanings, which creates additional complications. Similar words may also fail to catch all the nuances of each word in both languages. For instance, the French demande simply means a 'request', which is similar to but also very different from a demand in English and demandar in Spanish ("to sue"). The two "false friends" may actually be related, having the same origin, unlike "false cognates", which are similar words in different languages that appear to have a common historical linguistic origin (whatever their current meaning) but actually do not. As well as producing completely false friends, the use of loanwords often results in the use of a word in a restricted context, which may then develop new meanings not found in the original language. For example, angst means "fear" in a general sense (as well as "anxiety") in German, but when it was borrowed into English in the context of psychology, its meaning was restricted to a particular type of fear described as "a neurotic feeling of anxiety and depression". Also, gymnasium meant both 'a place of education' and 'a place for exercise' in Latin, but its meaning was restricted to the former in German and to the latter in English, making the expressions into false friends in those languages as well as in Greek, where it started out as 'a place for naked exercise'.

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