bra Adjective
Looks like bra Really means good, well
To say bra (the undergarment) in Swedish, use behå.
Some Swedish words look like an English word you already know, then mean something completely different. Here are 18 of the most common traps, each with the English word it resembles, what it really means, and how to say the English sense instead.
False friends in Swedish are words that look like an English word but mean something completely different. For example, bra means good, not bra, and glass means ice cream, not glass. This free guide lists 18 real Swedish false friends: the English word each one resembles, what it truly means, and how to say the English sense correctly.
All 18 Swedish false friends.
Looks like bra Really means good, well
To say bra (the undergarment) in Swedish, use behå.
Looks like glass Really means ice cream
To say glass (the material) in Swedish, use glas, with just one s.
Looks like gift Really means poison, venom (as an adjective, gift means married)
To say gift (a present) in Swedish, use present or gåva.
Looks like rock Really means coat, overcoat
To say rock (a stone) in Swedish, use sten.
Looks like kind Really means cheek
To say kind (nice) in Swedish, use snäll.
Looks like full Really means drunk
To say full (after a meal) in Swedish, use mätt.
Looks like fart Really means speed
A fartkontroll road sign just means a speed check, nothing rude.
Looks like slut Really means the end, finished, sold out
A rea slut sign in a shop just means the sale has ended.
Looks like cock Really means chef, cook
To say cock (the bird) in Swedish, use tupp.
Looks like puss Really means kiss
To say puss (the cat) in Swedish, use katt.
Looks like prick Really means dot, spot, point
Prickig just means spotted or polka dot, nothing vulgar.
Looks like semester Really means vacation, paid leave from work
To say semester (a school term) in Swedish, use termin.
Looks like novel Really means short story
To say novel (a full length book) in Swedish, use roman.
Looks like eventually Really means possibly, potentially
To say eventually in Swedish, use till slut or så småningom.
Looks like actual Really means current, topical, relevant right now
To say actual in Swedish, use faktisk.
Looks like sympathetic Really means likeable, pleasant, nice (describing a person)
To say sympathetic (compassionate) in Swedish, use medkännande.
Looks like fabric Really means factory
To say fabric (cloth) in Swedish, use tyg.
Looks like barn Really means child
To say barn (the farm building) in Swedish, use lada.
Data verified as of July 2026.
False friends stick when you meet them inside a real sentence. Lingo7 lets you read real books in Swedish with sentence-aligned translation and native-narrated audio, so the true meaning attaches to the story instead of the English lookalike. Save the tricky words and review them later. Free to start.
A false friend is a word that looks or sounds like a word in your language but carries a different meaning. English and Swedish overlap heavily because both borrowed from Latin, Greek, and French, or share older roots. The spelling stayed close while the meaning drifted, so Swedish bra still reads like "bra" to an English eye even though it means "good, well".
These slips are common because your brain rewards the shortcut: a familiar-looking word feels safe, so you skip the check. That is fine until bra or glass changes the meaning of a whole sentence. Recognizing the pattern is half the fix. Knowing the handful of high-frequency offenders on this page is the other half.
The durable fix is not memorization but exposure in context. When you read Swedish and see one of these words doing its real job in a sentence, with a translation a tap away, the correct meaning wins. That is exactly what reading in Lingo7 is built for.
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False friends are Swedish words that look almost identical to an English word but mean something different, like bra, which looks like "bra" but means "good, well". They exist because both languages inherited or borrowed from shared roots that then drifted apart. The fix is meeting them in real sentences until the true meaning sticks.
No. Swedish bra actually means good, well, not bra. To say bra (the undergarment) in Swedish, use behå. This is one of the most common Swedish false friends for English speakers, so it is worth learning early.
Memorizing a list helps for a day; context makes it permanent. When you meet Swedish words like bra and barn inside real sentences, with the translation one tap away, the correct meaning attaches to the situation instead of to the English lookalike. That is how reading in Lingo7 trains them out of you.
Yes. Swedish and English share a large amount of vocabulary through Latin, French, and centuries of borrowing, and that overlap is exactly what breeds false friends. This page covers 18 of the most common ones, from bra (looks like bra) to barn (looks like barn). Reading in context is the surest way to keep them straight.