Meaning of loanword | Babel Free

Definitions

A word directly taken into one language from another one.

Equivalents

Examples

“"Calque" is a loanword with French origins, and "loanword" is a calque with German origins.”

“New words, and particularly loanwords, are simplified, and hence naturalized in American much more quickly than in English. Employé has long since become employee in our newspapers, and asphalte has lost its final e, and manœuvre has become maneuver, and pyjamas has become pajamas.”

“This searching was facilitated by the author's knowledge of the vagaries of Anglo-Indian spelling and the numerous colonial-era transliteration systems used for loanwords from Indian languages.”

“Indeed, in 1957 Xenophon Zolotas, the then governor of the Bank of Greece, gave two speeches to the IMF that contained just Greek loanwords apart from the inevitable basic English. (Example: “Our policies should be based more on economic and less on political criteria.”)”

CEFR level