1959: Cognate Connotations Apr 26, 2020

English and German differ in many key ways, but share many lexical and cultural traits. For instance, the word 'heiß' in German is 'hot' in English—German [s] often is realized as [t] in English—but is doesn't share every connotation. 'Heiß', like 'hot' relates to physical temperature, and to physical attraction, but not to spice as it does in English. For that, Germans use 'scharf', which is related to 'sharp'.

Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts