Loanword

A loanword (or loan word or loan-word) is a word adopted from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language without translation. It is distinguished from a calque, or loan translation, where a meaning or idiom from another language is translated into existing words or roots of the host language.

Examples of loanwords in English include café (from French café ‘coffee’), bazaar (from Persian bāzār ‘market’), and kindergarten (from German Kindergarten ‘children’s garden’). The word loanword is itself a calque of the German term Lehnwort, while the term calque is a loanword from French.

Loans of several-word phrases, such as the English use of the French term déjà vu, are known as adoptions, adaptations, or lexical borrowing. Strictly speaking, the term loanword, although it is traditional, conflicts with the ordinary meaning of loaning since something is taken from but nothing is returned to the donor languages.

Origins

Donor language terms frequently enter a recipient language as a technical term in connection with exposure to foreign culture. The specific reference point may be to the foreign culture itself or to a field of activity in which the foreign culture has a dominant role.