A.Word.A.Day --calque

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Today's Word

calque

PRONUNCIATION:

(kalk)

MEANING:

noun: A word or expression formed by translating the components of a term from another language; a loan translation.

ETYMOLOGY:

From French calque (copy), from calquer (to trace or copy), from Italian calcare (to press or tread), from Latin calcare (to tread on), from calx (heel). Earliest documented use: 1926.

NOTES:

Swap the s in last week’s casque for an l, and we move from headgear to word formation.

A language may adopt a foreign word more or less intact, sometimes adapting its spelling or pronunciation. The bed sense of cot, for example, comes from Hindi khat. Or a language may translate a foreign term component by component. The English term moment of truth, for example, is a calque of Spanish el momento de la verdad.

A calque is also called a loan translation. Calque is a loanword from French calque, while loan translation is a loan translation from German Lehnübersetzung.

We featured loan translations in 2010 and 2013, and did a week of loanwords and loan translations in 2024.

USAGE:

“When the born-and-raised Montreal anglophone parts ways with someone by saying, ‘I hope I cross you again’ -- as in the French, j’espère qu’on se recroisera -- it is both a calque and, possibly, a nonce expression, a linguistic one-off.”
Eric Andrew-Gee; Exchanging Words; The Globe & Mail (Toronto, Canada); Sep 21, 2023.

See more usage examples of calque in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power. -Henry Agard Wallace, 33rd Vice President of the US (7 Oct 1888-1965)

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