There's not just macarons but also macaroons which are a completely different type of cookie/biscuit.

In UK we have French macarons, but also macaroons ... which are one of two distinct types of biscuit, both with the same name -- one made of almond and one made of coconut, although the latter is more like a flat cake.

Those both in USA too, same spelling.

There are also Scottish macaroons, which are covered in chocolate and desiccated coconut: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=scottish+macaroons&t=h_&iax=images...

And in France they also have Macron to make matters even more complicated :)

Fun fact(1): The German word Kekse is a Germanization of the term "cakes". Although a biscuit isn't exactly a cake :)

(1) - At least I think it's funny :)

The term “cookie” literally means “little cake” from the Dutch “koekje”. The term “biscuit” comes from the French for “twice cooked (cake)”.

> ... a biscuit isn't exactly a cake...

Certainly not. By law. Biscuits are luxury goods, and as such are taxed appropriately, whereas cakes are essential food items, and have a lower tax rate. This culminated in a VAT tribunal in 1991 [0] where the makers of Jaffa Cakes argued that said items were cakes not biscuits, in order to get the lower tax rate. One of the winning arguments was that cakes go stale, while biscuits go soft. I think this could count as precedent for a proper legal definition of the difference between cakes and biscuits. (Of course, American-style cookies aren't biscuits either by this definition.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Legal_status

this is an underrated comment that explains the difference between cookie and biscuit in an unambiguous way

Biscuit - "twice baked" in French.

That would then be „Zwieback“ in German, which refers to a kind of crispy mildly sweet bread that children get fed when they are ill :)

Or Doppelback, a break type

This is one of those facepalm moments :-))

German also has Biskuit, but it's used for a kind of dough used to make cake sponges.

We (French speakers) call macaroni macaroni though. Although there is also the term "coudes", meaning "elbows".

Aha! Well, I got fooled by Wikipedia, which links to the French page "macaron" from the English Macaron page as its translation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaron

After I did follow the link, I saw my mistake :)