Cognate

cog·nate

\'käg-?nat\ Show Spelled [kog-neyt]

–adjective

1. related by birth; of the same parentage, descent, etc.
2. Linguistics . descended from the same language or form: such cognate languages as french and spanish.
3. allied or similar in nature or quality.

–noun
4. a person or thing cognate with another.
5. a cognate word: The English word cold is a cognate of German kalt.

Origin:
1635–45; < L cognatus, equiv. to co- co- + -gnatus (ptp. of gnasci, nasci to be born)

—Related forms

cog·nate·ness, noun
cog·nat·ic /k?g'næt?k/ Show Spelled[kog-nat-ik] adjective
non·cog·nate, adjective, noun
cog·nate·ly adverb

Examples of COGNATE

1. English “eat” and German “essen” are cognate.
2. Spanish and French are cognate languages.

Origin of COGNATE

Latin cognatus, from co- + gnatus, natus, past participle of nasci to be born; akin to Latin gignere to beget — more at kin
First Known Use: circa 1645

Related to COGNATE

Synonyms: akin, analogous, alike, comparable, connate, correspondent, corresponding, ditto, like, matching, parallel, resemblant, resembling, similar, such, suchlike

Antonyms: different, dissimilar, diverse, unakin, unlike

A cognate of a word is a word in another language which is derived from the same root.

As an example, the English word mother has cognates in several other Indo-European languages: Greek (meter), Russian (mat'), German mutter, Sanskrit matri, and Irish mathair. These words all share a similar sound, and thousands of years ago they were all the same word in the same language.

Cognate given names also exist. For example Andrew, André, Andrea, Andrey, Andrzej and Ondrej are all cognates derived from the Greek root name (Andreas).