Thoughtco has a great definition and examples of cognates:
“A cognate is a word that is related in origin to another word, such as the English word brother and the German word bruder or the English word history and the Spanish word historia. The words were derived from the same source; thus, they are cognates (like cousins tracing their ancestry). Because they come from the same origin, cognates have similar meanings and often similar spellings in two different languages.”