Questions tagged [loanwords]
Questions about words borrowed by English from another language.
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Is there a word for something that was formerly a social norm but is no longer acceptable?
I've been reading a lot of various classic literature, and at times there is the sort of casual misogyny or racism that was commonplace and (within certain cultures) the social norm at that time. Such ...
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Is there a word for fans making excuses for their favorite artist? [duplicate]
The example I'm thinking of is Bethesda and Starfield. Other than the graphics it's not a well designed game, but people keep making excuses for it, when smaller teams have done far more with far less ...
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Are there examples of mutual loanwords in French and in English?
I was once asked the question:
What French word is commonly used in English for which an English word is commonly used in French?
The answer was respectively rendezvous and date, which I found very ...
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If a loan word is used with a different meaning in a given language, is it still a loan word?
Spanish speakers use 'basket,' for basketball, 'smoking' for black tie and 'freaki' for geek. They also use 'camping' for camp site and 'parking' for car park, but the participles retain the same ...
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Are the origins of ¡ay, güey! and 'oy vey' related at all? [closed]
Though both of these terms come from other languages, they are both said in English, depending on where one is. One (ay wey as a more English form) can mean holy crap!, and the other can mean ...
user486478
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What is the origin of the word "doh" (as seen in the world's first crossword puzzle)?
The first ever crossword puzzle was written by Arthur Wynne in 1913:
Image from Wikimedia Commons
It has several clues with obscure and obsolete answers, but I was able to find all of them in ...
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Term for cleaning up a language
Italian government wants to forbid the usage of foreign terms, which in Italy are mostly English:
Italians who use English and other foreign words in official communications could face fines of up to ...
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How did barista enter the English language?
The Italian term barista (bartender) entered the English language in 1992 and its usage has considerably increased since then according to Google Books:
"bartender in a coffee shop," as a ...
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Can you use 'amok' without 'run'? How?
I've only ever seen the word 'amok' used in conjunction with the verb 'to run'. As in, 'running amok' or 'to run amok'. Is there an accepted way to use 'amok' without the verb 'to run'? Do you have ...
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Why are long e and o most prone to be diphthongised by English speakers?
As a teacher of languages, it has struck me how English vowels love not just diphthongs, but even triphthongs, and this tendency presents itself in how native English speakers generally tend to ...
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Why did English start verbalizing Latin past participles, not keep nativizing infinitive suffixes like it used to do to French verbs? [closed]
The way English adapted French verbs used to be quite straightforward: swap the French infinitive suffixes with Middle English -en:
Latin crīdāre > Old French crier > Middle English crien (13th ...
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Are Loan words still compound? [closed]
English imports lots of foreign words. If those words are compound in their original language, do we still consider them compound in English?
Examples
Kindergarten
Chickpea
???
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Loanwords: adapt spelling or pronunciation?
Maybe "yacht" isn't the best example, but it was the "automatic choice" for me due to
this Monty Python sketch.
Well, in Germany it certainly it's pronounced and written "...
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Do native English speakers understand the word "onsen"
I live in Japan, and all native English speakers can understand the word "onsen". It means hot spring and comes from the Japanese language.
I wonder if native English speakers living in US, ...
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Is 'tête-à-tête' an expression in English language as well?
tête-à-tête is a French expression; however, I see it on Cambridge Dictionary. What confused me most was that it is not 'tete-a-tete' but 'tête-à-tête' in the dictionary.
user442526
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What is the technical term for people who either lends or borrow money? [closed]
For example, if i am giving people money expecting to be paid back or i borrow money from them promising to pay back without any interest. What would these people be called?
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Why are "just" and "justice" written with a "j", while "language" is written with a "g", when they all come from Latin?
The word "language" comes from Latin and is written with a "g". The adjective "just" and its noun form "justice" also come from Latin. These are the only words ...
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Why is "hammock" spelled the way it is?
The word hammock comes from Spanish hamaca.
type of hanging bed, 1650s, alteration of hamack, hamaca (1550s), from Spanish hamaca, from Arawakan (Haiti) word apparently meaning "fish nets" (...
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Why are legislatures called by their native language names but not heads of government?
Why do English-language news articles and other sources often refer to legislatures or legislative chambers by their name in the predominant language of the country (Lok Sabha, Duma, Knesset, Diet, ...
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Why keep useless diacritics? [closed]
Why foreign physicists' names retain diactrics when the phonetic meaning of these diactrics becomes irrelevant? "Ampère" uses "è" to indicate which type of French "e" to ...
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What word/phrase means "the feeling of the time/era"? [duplicate]
I think I recall encountering a phrase that means roughly "the characteristic feeling of a particular historical time". For example, this word/phrase could be applied to the French ...
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What is the plural form of German 'Sturm und Drang'?
Yesterday I encountered the artistic term 'Sturm und Drang' (roughly: storm and stress), a term that describes the literary and artistic movement influenced by Rousseau. It has also been co-opted in ...
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Capitalise or not foreign demonyms when original language uses lower case and English has no equivalent?
In English we capitalise demonyms. Someone from Paris is a Parisian. When we insert words from other languages we indicate the non-English nature of the word with quotation marks or italics. "He ...
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What is the true etymology of "algebra"?
This is more of a question for Arabic stack exchange if there was such a thing, but anyways:
The OED suggests as the etymology of the term "algebra"
Etymology: < post-classical Latin ...
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When should Latinisms be Italicized? [duplicate]
Some Latinisms are usually italicized in English whereas some Latin loanwords are not, even in the same text. However, I cannot find any clear pattern. Are there clear rules or guidelines about it? ...
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Nullifidan, heresiarch, latitudinarian-- Is there some database where I can find other obscure words describing "types" of people?
I only come across these really obscure words while reading. I really love the weight they carry. Do you know of any place where I can find more words of the same family? If not, do you know any other ...
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Why is a coffee bean not called “coffee”?
Why is a coffee bean not called ‘coffee’ when it obviously originated from there, it seems they reversed it to the coffee drink.
Even the Google search engine refers ‘Coffee’ as a drink and not the ...
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Why do certain consonant clusters occur only at the start of a syllable but others only at the end?
You may have noticed that in English, some consonant clusters
can occur only at the start of an English word while other consonant
clusters can occur only at the end.
For example, the com...
user387044
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Is using the plural form (in place of the original singular) of these Latin/Greek loan words acceptable?
The following Latin/Greek singular vs. plural errors make me cringe every time:
bacterium - bacteria
criterion - criteria
millennium - millennia
phenomenon - phenomena
It's extremely typical for an ...
user399018
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Another form of aficionado
Does a form of the word aficionado exist where it refers to the person. Perhaps something like an aficionè ? Similar to how habituè is a habitual person or someone who does something habitually.
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Why is stigmata a plural of stigma?
When I first looked this word up on Dictionary.com, I found entries not for it, but instead stigma. I was baffled. Words in the English language usually follow the -(e)s pluralization pattern, but why ...
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Is the word "psithurism" really used in English?
I have seen people using this word to refer to the sound wind makes as it moves through trees. However,
1. No reputable dictionary seems to have acknowledged this term as a valid english word.
2. ...
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Plural of irregular or foreign acronyms [duplicate]
What is the correct way of pluralizing acronyms in which the last word is either irregular or a foreign word?
For example: radiation transparent medium (RTM)
What would be the plural of the acronym ...
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How many English words are of native origin?
What percentage of current English words are of native Anglo-Saxon origin? I have seen stats about how large percentages of the English words currently in use come from French, Latin, or German ...
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How did zugzwang become an English word?
The word zugzwang means a move in chess which forces your opponent to make a detrimental move; a move causing all of your opponent's options to be moves which will worsen their situation. Although it ...
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Spanish-derived words in English
I recently found out that "mustang" is a Hispanicism word of Spanish origin: it is adapted from "mostrengo" or "mestreño", which roughly mean "without rooting"; ...
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When does a 'loan word' cease to be defined as such?
At what point does a 'loan word' cease to be defined as such? Does it depend on for how long, or frequently a word has been used?
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Term for anticipating counterarguments and rebutting them
There's this term for the rhetorical device of anticipating counterarguments and rebutting them, but I simply can't remember it.
Now I know what you're thinking - did you try googling it? Well I did,...
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Does the word “uzi” need to be capitalized?
"Uzi" is not contained in any Scrabble® dictionary that I can find online. I am assuming that the Scrabble® powers that be are treating it as a proper noun. However, after reading the Wikipedia ...
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The word "Comparison"
Declare - declaration. Proclaim - proclamation. Why isn't compare - comparation? For the 3 years that i've been studying the language intensively i've been always intuitively reading "comparison" as "...
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Is "adios" an English word now?
I recently heard an American being interviewed use the word "adios" casually in a sentence. The particular sense of the word seemed to be a sort of permanent "good bye."
Since the speaker was (as far ...
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Why is the English word of Chinese origin "Shih Tzu" used to refer to a dog breed not known in Chinese as "Shih Tzu"?
It is well known that it comes from a Wade-Giles transcription of the Mandarin Chinese word for "lion dog" (獅子狗 shih1-tzu0-kou3, from 獅子 "lion" + 狗 "dog"). This is part is indubitable. There's no ...
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Sad and Melancholy yet Beautiful
I have been struggling to find a word that I, at one time, had seen in my vocabulary lessons. I am trying to describe something that is "beautiful or attractive" yet also possessing "sadness or ...
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Are words from other languages(especially European ones) also appropriated in the English language, like they do in case of Hindi/Sanskrit?
I observe that there are many words in Hindi/Sanskrit, the pronunciation of which, are appropriated by the International(especially US) English speaking crowd, for example:-
Yoga
Avatar
Ramayan
...
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how did the word CHARLATAN make its way into English [closed]
How did the word charlatan find its way into English?
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Do you capitalize yakuza?
When referring to the infamous Japanese criminal organization, which sentence would be correct?
The yakuza member picked up his glasses, scooped some of the jewelry and loose change into his ...
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Schools and Shoals
School, as a group of fish, entered Middle English:
late Middle English: from Middle Low German, Middle Dutch schōle, of West Germanic origin; related to Old English scolu ‘troop’. (NOAD)
Shoal, ...
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A future loan-word for English that means the protective love one feels for children not your own [closed]
I am looking for words for a research project and possible commercial venture.
Is there one word in any other language that specifically means the protective love one feels for children that are not ...
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Word for a cushy position awarded to a crony? [duplicate]
I'm struggling to recall this word. If I recall correctly, it's of French origin. My search has so far been fruitless.
The nearest equivalent I came up with was the idiom pulling strings but that is ...
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Adding -s to French city names
This seems to be fairly common pattern. The modern English names of several French or French-related cities seem to add s for no obvious reason.
Marseille > Marseilles
Lyon > Lyons
Tanger > ...
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