Fifty False Friends in the KJV: Series Intro

Everybody knows that the KJV contains “dead words,” words we know we don’t know—like *amerce*, *bestead*, and *blains*. But most English readers today don’t realize that there are words in the KJV they *don’t* know they don’t know—simple words like *halt*, *commend*, and *remove*. These are what I call “false friends.”

A false friend in the KJV is three things:

1. It’s a word in the KJV that we still use.

2. It’s a word that we use differently than did the Elizabethans 400+ years ago.

3. And it’s a word where that difference often escapes English readers: they don’t realize they’re misunderstanding the intent of the KJV translators at that place.

And we uncover false friends through a four-step process (with a possible bonus step!):

1. Notice a possible false friend (through either contextual conflict or through regular checking of other translations)

2. Look up the underlying Hebrew or Greek word in a responsible original language lexicon.

3. Look up the KJV word in a contemporary dictionary to discover what it can mean today.

4. Look up KJV word in OED to discover what the word could mean in 1611.

5. Bonus: Look up the KJV word in contemporary or historical linguistic corpuses.

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