Cognacy

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The relationship between cognates; the condition of sharing a common ancestor term in another language. countable, uncountable

    "First, in depending on vocabulary, as opposed to morphology or grammar, one runs the risk of assuming cognacy between similar words when the real explanation is borrowing."

  2. 2
    The degree to which two languages share cognates, usually expressed as a percentage countable, uncountable

    "In Table 13.1 are given the percentages for the degrees of cognacy between pairs of languages in the Upper Cross group."

Synonyms

All synonyms
cognancycognatenesscognateness

Example

More examples

"First, in depending on vocabulary, as opposed to morphology or grammar, one runs the risk of assuming cognacy between similar words when the real explanation is borrowing."

More for "cognacy"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.