Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A word adopted from another language and completely or partially naturalized, as very and hors d'oeuvre, both from French.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A borrowed word; a word taken into one language from another.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun a word borrowed from another language; e.g. blitz is a German word borrowed into modern English.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A word directly taken into one language from another one with little or no translation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a word borrowed from another language; e.g. `blitz' is a German word borrowed into modern English

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

loan +‎ word, a calque of German Lehnwort

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word loanword.

Examples

  • The term is a loanword from the Japanese language.

    www.hardwarezone.com.sg 2010

  • The Japanese title of this manga uses the English loanword "maid" and the Japanese word Senki, meaning the record of a military campaign.

    unknown title 2009

  • The Japanese title of this manga uses the English loanword "maid" and the Japanese word Senki, meaning the record of a military campaign.

    unknown title 2009

  • DeMille, and as the new stripe of entertainment seized larger audiences, film became a favorite loanword around the world.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • In the majority of the most-spoken languages today, stress has become a loanword that readily captures particular experiences of the nerve-rattling kind, those common to people who inhabit the faster-paced millennial world—and who have identified the key source of their problems as their unsettling experience of that world.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • He even launched a fragrance called Safari, proof that, by 1990, the loanword from Swahili had journeyed far from its literal, earlier meanings.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • As a loanword to many other languages, shampoo carries associations of scientific advance, mass production, and national-level marketing, which themselves took off just when shampoos were first manufactured for export.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • In the majority of the most-spoken languages today, stress has become a loanword that readily captures particular experiences of the nerve-rattling kind, those common to people who inhabit the faster-paced millennial world—and who have identified the key source of their problems as their unsettling experience of that world.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • DeMille, and as the new stripe of entertainment seized larger audiences, film became a favorite loanword around the world.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • Recall how Hindi provided a term that was retooled by speakers of English into shampoo, which has since circled back to the subcontinent to become an “English” loanword to Hindi.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "Topping the list of the “most wordied�? words is schadenfreude, submitted by 250 users. This German loanword, defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary as “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune,�? easily outpaces runners-up like quixotic, serendipity, loquacious, and plethora."

    - http://blog.oup.com/2007/09/schadenfreude/

    September 7, 2007

  • ...and I can't stand it. ;-)

    September 7, 2007

  • ...and neither can I. Still. ;-)

    September 7, 2007

  • Shall we bug all the people who have it until they remove it? Or does that violate one of the Wordie commandments, "Thou shalt not criticize other's words".

    September 7, 2007

  • I can't stand it either, but I'm madly in love with shad-enfreude.

    September 7, 2007

  • Nah, no one should have to remove a word just because others don't like it. That's so un-Wordielike.

    But I do love shad-enfreude, John. Excellent.

    September 8, 2007