Cognates in linguistics are words that have a common origin. They may occur within a language, such as shirt and skirt as two English words descended from the Proto-Indo-European word *sker-, meaning "to cut". They may also occur across languages, for example night and German Nacht as descendants of Proto-Indo-European *nokt-, "night". The word cognate derives from Latin cognatus, from co (with) +gnatus, natus, past participle of nasci "to be born". Literally it means "related by blood, having a… (More on Cognate)