loanword

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of loanword For instance, people, a French loanword, may be spelled peple, pepill, poeple, or poepul. Big Think, 10 Apr. 2025 The newest dictionary additions include loanwords from Southeast Asia, South Africa and Ireland. Peter Guo, NBC news, 27 Mar. 2025 In fact, Mandarin itself used thousands of loanwords from Japanese and English when new disciplines such as sociology and natural science entered China’s curricula a mere century ago. Tenzin Dorjee, Foreign Affairs, 28 Nov. 2023 During this period, more than 10,000 loanwords from French entered the English language, mostly in domains where the aristocracy held sway: the arts, military, medicine, law and religion. Phillip M. Carter, Fortune Well, 12 June 2023 Most English loanwords borrow from languages that, like English, use the Latin alphabet. Sarah Bunin Benor, The Conversation, 21 May 2020 With the mega-success of Starbucks and its various coffee competitors, BARISTA has transformed from a somewhat niche Italian loanword to a term most everyone not only knows but uses regularly. Ryan P. Smith, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Dec. 2019 And so the language planners, led by linguist Ari Páll Kristinsson, are working furiously to match every English word or concept with an Icelandic one—giving young Icelanders no excuse for depending on loanwords learned online. Caitlin Hu, Quartz, 2 June 2019 Each provided loanwords, words adopted from a donor language without translation. Courtney Linder, The Christian Science Monitor, 19 Apr. 2018
Recent Examples of Synonyms for loanword
Noun
  • In spite of its phonetics, apparently the term is not Yiddish, but a neologism declared by a French writer of comedic phantasms to be German and intended to designate an absurd, unfathomable object that can serve all kinds of purposes.
    Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Artforum, 1 June 2025
  • Now, without finding a new emblem to rally behind, Democrats may be doing little more than battling that other neologism: MAGA.
    Kevin M. Schultz, The Conversation, 8 May 2025
Noun
  • Further imaging showcased the designs on either side of the coinage.
    Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 11 June 2025
  • From the July/August 2014 issue: The power of two McCartney and John Lennon were mesmerized by these nonsensical yet lyrical coinages.
    Mark Leibovich, The Atlantic, 31 Mar. 2025
Noun
  • This could involve helping systems learn colloquialisms and proper usages of terms.
    Kathy Kristof, San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 Mar. 2025
  • You would be forgiven for assuming this a playful colloquialism, perhaps revealing a tenderness to the hunt.
    Cecilia Rodriguez, Forbes, 6 Mar. 2025
Noun
  • But talking in euphemisms produced different results.
    Andrew R. Chow, Time, 12 June 2025
  • That means saying, without euphemism or apology, that antisemitism cloaked as anti-Zionism is still antisemitism.
    Brendan Reilly, Chicago Tribune, 12 June 2025
Noun
  • Narrator Mary Lewis, raised in Newfoundland herself, delivers the book in a manner that seems stilted at first but grows more appealing as Lewis moves further into the story, with its pleasing archaisms and evocation of balked communication.
    Katherine A. Powers, Washington Post, 21 Jan. 2020
  • That phrase, which may strike some young American ears as an archaism if not an oxymoron, is worth unpacking, and Amis provides readers with a pocket account of the historical preconditions of his extravagant fame.
    A.O. SCOTT, New York Times, 28 Feb. 2018
Noun
  • One of Biden's first acts after taking office in 2021 was to re-enroll the U.S. in the agreement, a move Trump reversed by executive order at the start of his second term.
    Rachel Treisman, NPR, 20 June 2025
  • As a movie on its own terms, White Zombie (which would be followed up by something of a sequel, Revolt of the Zombies) can at times feel a bit stagnant, a trait that's not uncommon in these early '30s horror movies where the cinematic language of the genre was still being developed.
    James Grebey, Time, 20 June 2025
Noun
  • The images’ long durations fuse with the buildings’ cool serenity, making a bold visual statement about the self-consciously contemplative aesthetic of modernism itself.
    Richard Brody, New Yorker, 20 June 2025
  • Amid the broader sociopolitical tensions and rising revolutionary fervor, the Group synthesized the concerns of a vast swathe of artists by interpreting the abstraction of Western modernism through aesthetics drawn from Islamic and Mesopotamian cultures into various styles.
    Chadd Scott, Forbes.com, 20 June 2025

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“Loanword.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/loanword. Accessed 2 Jul. 2025.

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