Calque

In linguistics, a calque (pronounced ) or loan translation (itself a calque of German Lehnübersetzung) is a phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word translation.

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The word is also used as a verb: to calque means to loan translate from another language to create a new lexeme in the target language.

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Calques from Chinese

• English chop-chop calques Chinese ?? meaning quick-quick (via pidgin English)
• English chopsticks calques Chinese ?? whose root means quick (via pidgin English)
• English look-see calques Chinese ?? or ?? (via pidgin English)
• English brainwashing calques ??/?? (via U.S. military during Korean conflict)

Calques from French

• English breakfast calques French d?jeuner (which now means lunch in Europe, but maintains the same meaning of breakfast in Qu?bec).
• English Governor-General calques French gouverneur général
• English free verse calques French vers libre
• English old guard calques French Vieille Garde (the imperial guard of Napoleon I)
• English Adam's apple calques French pomme d'Adam, meaning pomegranate (which in turn was influenced by Arabic rummāna)
• English flea market calques French march? aux puces

Calques from German

• English Superman calques German Übermensch
• English standpoint calques German Standpunkt
• English worldview calques German Weltanschauung
• English antibody calques German Antik?rper
• English thought experiment calques German Gedankenexperiment
• English beer garden calques German Biergarten

Calques from Latin

• English commonplace calques Latin locus commūnis (referring to a generally applicable literary passage), which itself is a calque of Greek koinos topos
• English devil's advocate calques Latin advocātus diabolī, referring to an official appointed to present arguments against a proposed canonization or beatification in the Catholic Church
• English dog days calques Latin diēs canīculāris
• English wisdom tooth calques Latin dēns sapientiae
• English vicious circle calques Latin circulus vitiōsus
• English Milky Way calques Latin via lactea
• English foot in the sense of a unit of metrical verse (e.g. in the fourth foot of the verse...) calques Latin pes which is used in both senses; the transferred use in Latin is itself a calque on Greek pous.

Calques from Spanish

• English blue-blood calques Spanish sangre azul
• English moment of truth calques Spanish el momento de la verdad

Linguistics: Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. (Lay people sometimes use the term linguistician, but as Aitchison 2003 points out, this is "too much of a tongue-twister to become generally accepted.")...

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Language: A language is a system of expression and communication. Individual languages use sound, gesture, and other means to express and communicate concepts, emotions, ideas, and thoughts. Expressions of a language are analysable into words, whose meanings are usually conventional. The word "language" is ...