calque

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calque

WOTD – 1 August 2007

Etymology

From French calque (“calque”, literally “copy, tracing”), from calquer (“to copy, trace”) (whence also calk), itself borrowed from Italian calcare, from Latin calcāre (“to tread”). Doublet of calcate and calcation.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /kælk/
Audio (US): (file)
Rhymes: -ælk
Homophones: calc, calk
Hyphenation: calque

Noun

More information Examples ...

Examples
watershed from German Wasserscheide

calque (plural calques)

(linguistics, translation studies) A word or phrase in a language formed by word-for-word or morpheme-by-morpheme translation of a word in another language.
Synonyms: loan translation, calquing

Hypernym: loan formation

Coordinate term: (a term that is partially a calque and partially formally contains a foreign element) partial calque, loanblend
- 2005 March 27, William Safire, “Kifaya!”, in The New York Times Magazine‎, archived from the original on 14 March 2021:
  David S. Powers, professor of Islamic history and law at Cornell, says he thinks that the word as used today is in the nature of what linguists call a calque, a borrowing from another language in literal translation […]
- 2023 July 26, Patricia Mazzei, “‘Get Down’ From the Car. ‘Make’ the Line. Is Miami English a Dialect?”, in The New York Times‎, archived from the original on 31 July 2023:
  Those phrases, translated from Spanish, are known as calques. […] The three young Miamians in the video also use “super” as an adverb, one of the calques from Spanish mentioned in Dr. Carter’s research. (“Ay, I’m super bloated.”)
- 2024 June 7, Soumaya Amine Al Salti, “Calque Examples in Translating: Impacts on Linguistic Diversity”, in Soumaya Salti‎, archived from the original on 21 March 2025:
  One of the primary benefits of calque is its ability to enhance cross-cultural communication.

Hyponyms

partial calque

Coordinate terms

Derived terms

Translations

word formed by word-for-word translation of a word in another language

Afrikaans: leenvertaling (af), calque
Albanian: kalk (sq) m
Arabic: تَرْجَمَة اِقْتِرَاضِيَّة (ar) f (tarjama iqtirāḍiyya)
Armenian: բառապատճեն (hy) (baṙapatčen)
Azerbaijani: kalka, hərfi tərcümə
Belarusian: ка́лька f (kálʹka)
Breton: drevezadenn f
Bulgarian: ка́лка f (kálka)
Catalan: calc (ca) m
Chinese:
Cantonese: 借譯 / 借译 (ze³ jik⁶)

Mandarin: 借譯 / 借译 (jièyì), 仿造詞 / 仿造词 (fǎngzàocí)
Czech: kalk (cs) m
Danish: oversættelseslån n
Dutch: leenvertaling (nl) f
Esperanto: paŭso (eo), tradukprunto, kalkeo
Faroese: umsetingarlán n, týðingarlán n, tøkutýðing f
Finnish: käännöslaina (fi)
French: calque (fr) m
Georgian: კალკი (ka) (ḳalḳi)
German: Lehnübersetzung (de) f
Greek: μεταφραστικό δάνειο (el) n (metafrastikó dáneio), εκτύπωμα (el) n (ektýpoma)
Hungarian: tükörfordítás (hu), tükörszó (hu), kalk (hu)
Icelandic: tökuþýðing f
Indonesian: pinjam terjemah
Irish: lomaistriúchán m
Italian: calco (it) m
Japanese: 翻訳借用 (ja) (ほんやくしゃくよう, hon'yaku shakuyō)
Korean: 번역차용(翻譯借用) (beonyeokchayong)
Latvian: kalks (lv) m
Macedonian: преведеница f (prevedenica), калка f (kalka)
Norwegian:
Bokmål: oversettingslån n, oversettelseslån (no) n

Nynorsk: omsetjingslån n
Persian: گرته‌برداری (fa) (gerte-bardâri)
Polish: kalka (pl) f
Portuguese: decalque (pt) m, decalque linguístico m
Romanian: calc (ro) n
Russian: ка́лька (ru) f (kálʹka)
Serbo-Croatian:
Cyrillic: ка̏лк m

Roman: kȁlk (sh) m
Slovak: kalk m
Slovene: kalk m
Spanish: calco (es) m
Swedish: översättningslån (sv) n
Thai: แคลเก้
Turkish: öyküntü (tr)
Ukrainian: ка́лька (uk) f (kálʹka)
Welsh: cyfieithiad benthyg m
Yiddish: קאַלקע f (kalke)

Trivia

While the term calque is a loanword from French, the term loanword is a calque from the German compound noun Lehnwort.

Verb

calque (third-person singular simple present calques, present participle calquing, simple past and past participle calqued)

(linguistics, translation studies, transitive) To adopt (a word or phrase) from one language to another by semantic translation of its parts.
- 2024 June 7, Soumaya Amine Al Salti, “Calque Examples in Translating: Impacts on Linguistic Diversity”, in Soumaya Salti‎, archived from the original on 21 March 2025:
  Terms like "cloud computing" have been calqued into multiple languages, making it easier for global audiences to grasp complex technological concepts. […] For example, translating Shakespeare's works into other languages often involves calquing phrases to maintain the rhythm and metaphorical richness of the original.