Editing Loanword (section)

{{short description|Word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2021}}
[[File:20140909-0248 Costa Mesa Mitsuwa.JPG|thumb|''[[Tofu]]'' is an [[English language|English]] loanword from the [[Japanese language|Japanese]] word {{Transliteration|ja|tōfu}}'','' which is itself a loanword from the [[Chinese language|Chinese]] word ''dòufu.'']]
{{Sociolinguistics}}
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 (linguistics)|borrowing]].<ref>{{cite web |title=loanword |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loanword |website=Dictionary |publisher=Merriam-Webster |access-date=2 October 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|
last=Jespersen|first=Otto |author-link=Otto Jespersen
|title=Language|place=New York|publisher=Norton Library|year=1964
|isbn=978-0-393-00229-4|page=208
|quote="Linguistic 'borrowing' is really nothing but imitation."}}</ref> 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).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Dunkin |first1=Philip |title=Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English |date=2014 |publisher=OUP Oxford |location=Google Books |isbn=9780199574995 |page=1 |edition=Online |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199574995.001.0001|chapter=1|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199574995.001.0001 }}</ref>

Loanwords may be contrasted with [[calque]]s, 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 [[cognate]]s, which are words in two or more [[language family|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.