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This article presents a new dimension of the lexical category of “false friends”. False friends are the result of complex phenomena, exceeding bilingualism, so that they are not to be explained solely within the context of the mother tongue or of the foreign language. Many false friendships, i.e. potential false friends, stem from socalled internationalisms. In this article I discuss, in a concrete manner, based on some examples of Greek words in German, the way in which false friendships build a triangle, going further than the limits of one language pair. The main purpose of the article is to show that the etymological condition, even if only optional in defining false friends, has a major role to play in the international lexical patrimony of European languages.
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