Tuesday, February 7, 2012

False Friends

I stumbled across this phrase on wikipedia while reading about something else-- and realized these "false friends" are old friends of mine, Shakespeare introduced them to me!
False friends (French: faux amis) are pairs of words or phrases in two languages or dialects that look or sound similar, but differ in meaning.

Comedy sometimes includes puns on false friends, which are considered particularly amusing if one of the two words is obscene; when an obscene meaning is produced in these circumstances, it is called cacemphaton, Greek for "ill-sounding".

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Crafting Shakespeare

Welcome to Crafting Shakespeare, a blog where actors, directors, and other theatre professionals can discuss the craft of performing Shakespeare. This blog is just getting under way, so if you would like to post a question about Shakespearean performance, or if you have an idea for a topic, please write me at jill at austinstages dot com and I'll do my best to get it answered promptly. Thanks! (Also, feel free to comment on posts and let's get a discussion going!)