Loanword

Tofu is an English loanword from Japanese word tōfu, in which it is itself a loanword from the Chinese word dòufu.
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A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) 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.[1][2] 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).[3]

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.

  1. ^ "loanword". Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 2 October 2022.
  2. ^ Jespersen, Otto (1964). Language. New York: Norton Library. p. 208. ISBN 978-0-393-00229-4. Linguistic 'borrowing' is really nothing but imitation.
  3. ^ Dunkin, Philip (2014). "1". Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English (Online ed.). Google Books: OUP Oxford. p. 1. ISBN 9780199574995.