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Concept

Loanword

Loanword
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Overview

A loanword is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term that is well established in the linguistic field despite its acknowledged descriptive flaws: nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything (i.e., the loanword).

Loanwords may be contrasted with calques, in which a word is borrowed into the recipient language by being directly translated from the donor language rather than being adopted in (an approximation of) its original form. They must also be distinguished from cognates, which are words in two or more related languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin in the ancestral language, rather than because one borrowed the word from the other.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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  1. But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest integration. How small is the degree of this integration, however, when compared with that reached in well-developed languages is shown both by the great length of the compound words used for things and acts of constant…

    Herbert Spencer, First Principles

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  2. These languages consist of monosyllabic words which follow one another in direct succession without any intermediate inflectional elements to modify their meaning. Philologists usually call such languages 'root-languages,' because a sound complex that carries the essential meaning of a word, apart from all modifying elements, is called by their science a verbal root.

    Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind

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  3. Arguments are said to be connected together which are derived from words of the same kind. But words are of the same kind which, originating from one word, are altered in various ways; as, "_sapiens, sapienter, sapientia_." The connexion of these words is called [Greek: suxugia]; from which arises an argument of this kind: "If the land is common, every one has a right to feed his cattle on it." An argument is…

    Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4

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