Mistakable French: Faux Amis and Key Words

by PhilipThody (Author), HowardEvans (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $15.12

  This book is a dictionary and guide to 1,000 words which look alike in French and English but are faux amis -- false friends indeed. Thus the French word colon means a colonial settler, patron can be a pattern (as for a dress) or an employer, while defiance means distrust, une bombe can mean art insect spray or also an elaborate dessert! And impotent is not necessarily sexually impotent, which in French is impuissant, but seriously crippled. The individual entries also provide the wide social and cultural context within which the words are used in French. This book is very instructive as well as great fun.