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rob74today at 7:15 AM2 repliesview on HN

Wow, that's a really sneaky "false friend" in Italian! Especially since it even has the meaning of "forest-related" in other Latinic languages, e.g. in French route forestière = forest road.


Replies

phikappatoday at 8:11 AM

I wouldn't call it so much a false friend as forest/foreign (and forfeit and I'm sure a bunch of other words) all coming from the same Latin "foris" root and being semantically related.

In Italian, outside is just "fuori".

You're a foreigner to what you've forfeited in the forest.

bonzinitoday at 7:25 AM

Forest-related is "forestale" in Italian.