falda
ES [ˈfalda] · Spanish for “skirt” · sounds like Czech fald (a fold, a pleat)
A Spaniard points to someone’s falda and means the skirt she has on. A Czech overhearing it catches fald and pictures something far less flattering. In Czech a fald is a fold or a pleat, and in the plural faldy it is the rolls of fat that spill over a tight waistband. One shared sound, and a compliment about an outfit turns into a remark about a gut.
Both go back to the Germanic verb for folding, *falþan - the same root as plain English fold. Spanish took it in early through Frankish: a falda was a fold of cloth, then the folded garment itself, the skirt (which is also why the slope of a hill is the falda de la montaña, the fold of the land). Czech borrowed it later from German Falte and kept the literal crease - a fald is a pleat, and colloquially faldy are the rolls of fat that fold over a waistband. One fold, draped into a skirt on one side of Europe and pinched into a pleat on the other.