There is a table of examples in the link. Some I saw include:

Desert

  • desert Latin dēserō (“to abandon”) << ultimately PIE **seh₁- (“to sow”)
  • Ancient Egyptian: Deshret (refers to the land not flooded by the Nile)  from dšr (red)

Shark

  • shark Middle English shark from uncertain origin
  • Chinese 鲨 (shā)  Named as its crude skin similar to sand (沙 (shā))

Kayak

  • Inuktitut ᖃᔭᖅ (kayak) Proto-Eskimo *qyaq
  • Turkish kayık (‘small boat’)[17] Old Turkic kayguk << Proto-Turkic kay- (“to slide, to turn”)

A lot of these could be TIL posts of their own.

I also wonder if some of these are actually false cognates, or if there is a much earlier common origin with false associations that came afterwards

  • @[email protected]
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    285 days ago

    Ah my favorite false cognate isn’t here, that means I get to post about it!

    Emoticon :) is emotion + icon in English, invented in the 80s or early 90s. Exactly what you think.

    Emoji is Japanese 絵文字 which basically translates to “picture character”. That word has been around for a long time; I don’t know that I can put a date to it. But certainly a lot older than computers.

    They just happen to sound similar

    • OtterOP
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      35 days ago

      Oh wow, I assumed they were related :)

      • kamiheku
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        175 days ago

        Well, no, it’s not, since emoji is not a Latin word. It is a fun factoid though!

        • @[email protected]
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          4 days ago

          Right, for sure if you were to pluralize emoji (which is singular) it wouldn’t be emojus in japanese.

          I was gonna toss some guesses here but it’s a word I don’t think you pluralize really, as we don’t in English

          • @[email protected]
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            54 days ago

            Japanese doesn’t have different forms for plural, so “emoji” can be both singular and plural.

            • @[email protected]
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              24 days ago

              yeah, if anything they might collectivize it like “emoji-tachi”. though I’ve never heard it used that way.