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In linguistics, a calque (pronounced /ˈkælk/) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word (Latin: "verbum pro verbo") or root-for-root translation.
For example, the common English phrase "flea market" is a phrase calque that literally translates the French "marché aux puces" ("fleas' market").[1]
Going in the other direction, from English to French, provides an example of how a compound word may be calqued by first breaking it down into its component roots. The French "gratte-ciel" is a word-coinage inspired by the model of the English "skyscraper"—"gratter" literally translates as "to scrape", and "ciel" translates as "sky". The same is true for the Spanish word "rascacielos" (literally, a "scrape-skies") and to a certain extent the German word "Wolkenkratzer", the Dutch "Wolkenkrabber" (cloud scratcher), and the Norwegian word "skyskraper" (literally, a "cloud-scraper"). A further is "bienvenue" ("welcome"), sometimes used for "you're welcome" in French Canada. French proper utilizes phrases such as "pas du tout" ("not at all") and has no literal equivalent of "you're welcome".
Used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components so as to create a new lexeme in the target language.
"Calque" itself is a loanword from a French noun, and derives from the verb "calquer" (to trace, to copy),[2] while loanword is a calque of the German "Lehnwort", and loan translation a loan translation of "Lehnübersetzung".[3]
Proving a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation than an untranslated loanword, since in some cases a similar phrase might have arisen in both languages independently. This is less likely to be the case when the grammar of the proposed calque is quite different from that of the language proposed to be borrowing, or the calque contains less obvious imagery.