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In Italian, il peperone is what the English would call bell pepper, but the English word peperoni has come to mean a type of sausage, in particular when on a pizza.

In Italian, latte is milk, but in English and several other languages, latte has come to mean a type of coffee with milk.

In English, chai is short for masala chai, a type of Indian tea with sweet spices, but the word chai sounds (very) similar to Russian чай, Hindi चाय, Persian چای, or Mandarin 茶, which all just mean tea.

All of the above have the potential to confuse people who speak one language but not the other.

Is there a word for this type of etymological journey, in which a word is taken from another language but given a quite different meaning?

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  • Le smoking, le rosbif, sportif, le five o'clock
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Apr 20, 2022 at 12:35
  • See also this question: linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/31980/9781
    – Sir Cornflakes
    Commented Apr 20, 2022 at 13:07
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    Virtually every borrowed word has a different meaning or reference in the borrowing language from the meaning it had or has in the source language. It's unavoidable; native names have all sorts of associations that are stripped off by borrowing and replaced by new ones and new metaphors and strange expectations in a new culture.
    – jlawler
    Commented Apr 20, 2022 at 15:32

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The closest term I can think of is "false friends" (informal) or "bilingual homophones" (formal), they can either derive from loanwords (taken from a different language then developed to a new meaning), or from shared etymology.

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    Hmm, but the examples I gave are rather direct paths of loanwords becoming false friends, which does not apply to all false friends.
    – gerrit
    Commented Apr 20, 2022 at 12:50
  • Note that all of the examples have changed from words referring to one kind of food/drink to words referring to a different type. Not really "completely changed".
    – jlawler
    Commented Apr 21, 2022 at 15:22

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