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Does “sapo” mean soap or toad in Esperanto?

This clip’s whole theme is words that look like a trap, and sapo is the cleanest example: in Esperanto it means “soap,” the bar by the sink. In Spanish, the identical-looking sapo means “toad.” Two languages, same four letters, animal in one and hygiene product in the other — a false friend with nothing shared except spelling.

Esperanto’s sapo isn’t a fluke choice: it traces to Latin sapo, the same root behind English “soap” and German Seife, so the Esperanto word is a true friend to those languages even while being a false one to Spanish. The clip’s other pairs work the same way — koko (rooster) versus Spanish coco (coconut), pato (frying pan) versus Spanish pato (duck) — near-identical spelling, unrelated meaning, one root history apiece.