Calque

A calque - pronounced to rhyme with 'talc', as un 'talcum powder', {IPA|kælk}} - is a word or phrase which translates a word or phrase in another language and has constituent parts which translate the corresponding parts of the word or phrase in the first language - for example, the English word 'superman' is a calque of the German Übermensch, which it translates: 'super' translating Über, and 'man' translating mensch; the Italian word grattacielo is a calque of the English 'skyscraper', grattacielo meaning 'skyscraper', and its component parts – gratta and cielo - meaning, respectively, 'scrape{s{' and 'sky'; and the English sentence 'That goes without saying' is a calque of the French Cela va sans dire.

Note that one word's being a calque of another is not a reciprocal relationship: a word is a calque of the word it copies, but the converse is not true: the copied word is not a calque of the word which copies it. The calque is the copy. (The French word calque, of which the English word 'calque' is a transliteration, means 'tracing' or 'close copying', and the related verb, calquer, means 'to trace' or 'to copy'.) Clearly, to establish that one word (A) is a calque of another (B) in another language is not always a straightforward matter: identity of meaning between the two words and between their constituent parts is necessary but not sufficient for A's being a calque of B: it is also necessary to establish that A was coined on the model of B, i.e., to exclude the possibility that B was coined on the model of A , or that the two words were coined independently of one another - causal claims which it may often be difficult to prove.

The expression 'loan translation' is sometimes used as an alternative to calque.