This
expression coined by
Maxime Koessler and
Jules Derocquigny in their book "
Les Faux Amis ou les pièges du vocabulaire anglais", (
1928) is used to define
words that
just appear to have
similar meaning in
two different languages. They are called
false friends or more technically
false cognates,
because they can
deceive you, and if you are
learning languages, it is very likely that you’ll
run into trouble with them.
So, be aware of false friends! …like this one
For Spanish speaking people, embarrassed sounds like embarazada (pregnant).
And every teacher uses this quite worn joke as a reminder :
It can be embarrassing to be embarazada, (pregnant)!
...at least if you learn from Spanish to English...