Loanwords and Other Borrowings

I have posted a series of articles here recently about the words that have entered English from French, a process that began with the French-Norman conquest of England in 1066. Some people might refer to those words as "loanwords." But are they loanwords? 

A loanword is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. 

"Loan" or "borrow" may seem like odd descriptive words considering that nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything, as in our typical usage of those words.

I had to research the term, and it gets more complicated. Loanwords may be contrasted with calques, in which a word is borrowed into the recipient language by being directly translated from the donor language rather than being adopted in (an approximation of) its original form. 

Some calques in English:
A word, skyscraper, from French gratte-ciel, literally to “scrape-sky.
A phrase, "moment of truth" from Spanish, "el momento de la verdad," meaning a critical turning point.
Superman comes from the German Übermensch, a Nietzschean concept, that later becomes the comic hero.
Brainwashing originates with the Chinese xǐnǎo (洗脑), literally translated as “wash brain.” 
Adam’s apple is a Latin borrowing of pomum Adami, a Biblical reference to the forbidden fruit.

The word "loanword" is itself a calque from German lehnwort, meaning a word borrowed from another language.

We also distinguish loanwords from cognates, which are words in two or more related languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin in the ancestral language, rather than because one borrowed the word from the other.

Here are a few -
          English  | Cognate Language  |  Cognate Word and Meaning

• Animal Spanish/French animal A living creature
• Hospital French/Spanish hôpital / hospital Medical facility
• Family French/Spanish famille / familia Group of related people
• Minute French/Spanish minute / minuto Unit of time
• Telephone French/Spanish téléphone / teléfono Communication device

Examples of loanwords in the English language:
 café (from French café, which means "coffee"), bazaar (from Persian bāzār, which means "market"), and kindergarten (from German Kindergarten, which literally means "children's garden"). 

Here's an oddity - the word calque is a loanword, while the word loanword is a calque
Calque comes from the French noun calque ("tracing; imitation; close copy"). Loanword and the phrase loan translation are translated from German nouns Lehnwort and Lehnübersetzung (German: [ˈleːnʔybɐˌzɛt͡sʊŋ]

Loans of multi-word phrases, such as the English use of the French term déjà vu, are known as adoptions, adaptations, or lexical borrowings.

Although colloquial and informal register loanwords are typically spread by word-of-mouth, technical or academic loanwords tend to be first used in written language, often for scholarly, scientific, or literary purposes.

Pen Names

Pseudonyms are "false" names or names that are not the true (given) names of an individual. They are one of a larger group of -onyms and -nyms (like synonyms and antonyms) in English - many more than we were taught in school.

Pseudonyms, when used by an author, are called pen names.

Some Famous Pen Names

Richard Bachman is Stephen King, 20th century American horror author

Acton Bell, Currer Bell, and Ellis Bell were the names used by Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, and Emily Brontë

Mary Westmacott is Agatha Christie, 20th century British mystery writer

Anthony Burgess is John Burgess Wilson, 20th century British writer, author of A Clockwork Orange.

Lewis Carroll is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 19th century British author, mathematician, known best for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Sue Denim is used by Dav Pilkey, a writer and illustrator of the popular "Captain Underpants" children's book series and is also used by science fiction writer Lewis Shiner. Sue Denim is a parody of the word pseudonym itself.

Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), 20th century Danish author of Out of Africa

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), 20th-century American poet, novelist and memoirist

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), 19th-century English novelist

C. S. Forester (Cecil Smith), 20th-century writer of the Captain Horatio Hornblower novels and The African Queen

O. Henry (William Sidney Porter), American author of short stories and novels

Hergé (Georges Remi), 20th-century Belgian comics writer and artist, famous worldwide for creating the Tintin series of books

Ann Landers (Esther Pauline Friedman), and Abigail Van Buren/Dear Abby (Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips), advice columnists

Stan Lee (Stanley Martin Lieber), comic book pioneer & Spiderman creator

Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin), 17th-century French theater writer, director and actor, and writer of comic satire.

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), 20th-century British author of Animal Farm and 1984

Ellery Queen     Frederic Dannay, and Manfred B. Lee shared this pen name for their 20th century detective fiction

Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), 20th-century British short story writer and satirist

George Sand (Armandine Lucie Aurore Dupin), 19th-century French novelist and early feminist

Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel), also used "Theo. LeSieg", 20th-century American writer and cartoonist best known for his books

Lemony Snicket is the listed author of A Series of Unfortunate Events but is really the pen name of Daniel Handler

Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), 19th-century French writer

Mark Twain    Samuel Langhorn Clemens (also used "Sieur Louis de Conte" for his fictional biography of Joan of Arc) 19th-century American humorist, writer and lecturer

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 18th-century French Enlightenment writer, deist and philosopher.

Going Down a Rabbit Hole

To "go down a rabbit hole" means to get so deeply absorbed in a topic, task, or search that you lose track of time and often end up somewhere completely different from where you started.

It’s that "How did I get here?" moment. You looked up "rabbit hole," it referenced Lewis Carroll which led you to something about math, and down the hole you went.

The phrase originated from Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In the story, Alice follows a White Rabbit down a hole, which transports her into a surreal, illogical, and seemingly endless world.

While the book gave us the imagery, the modern "internet" usage really took off in the late 1990s and early 2000s along with the Internet, social media and smartphones.

The modern rabbit hole starts with a minor question or interest. One piece of information found leads to another, then another (often via hyperlinks or "recommended" videos). When you emerge from this time loop, you realize that many minutes or hours have passed. maybe you acquired some new and oddly specific knowledge. maybe you just wasted time on useless information.

Pseudonyms: Rappers

I have written before about pseudonyms. The use of these "stage names" is a very common practice amongst music rappers.

Here are some of the better-known ones.

The origins are sometimes obvious, sometimes not obvious. For example, Eminem began rapping at age 14 with his friend Mike Ruby using the pseudonyms "Manix" for Ruby and "M&M" for Marshall Mathers III initials. "M&M" evolved into "Eminem."

A less obvious origin is that of "50 Cent," adopted by Curtis James Jackson III. Jackson adopted the nickname "50 Cent" as a metaphor for change. The name was used earlier by Kelvin Martin, a 1980s Brooklyn thief known as "50 Cent." Jackson said he chose it "because it says everything I want it to say. I'm the same kind of person 50 Cent was. I provide for myself by any means."

Andre 3000 ............... Andre Benjamin
Busta Rhymes ............... Trevor Smith
Cee-Lo .................. Thomas Calloway
Common .............. Lonnie Rashid Lynn
DMX ...................... Earl Simmons
Foxy Brown ............... Inga Marchand
The Game .................. Jayceon Taylor
Ghostface Killah ............. Dennis Coles
Grandmaster Flash .......... Joseph Saddler
Ice Cube .................. O’Shea Jackson
Ice-T ....................... Tracy Morrow
Ja Rule ...................... Jeffrey Atkins
Jay-Z ...................... Shawn Carter
KRS-One .....................Kris Parker
Lil’ Kim ....................Kimberly Jones
LL Cool J ............... James Todd Smith
Ludacris ................. Christopher Bridges
Mos Def .................... Dante Smith
Notorious BIG ......... Christopher Wallace
Snoop Dogg ...............Calvin Broadus
T.I............................Clifford Harris Jr.

MacGuffin

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo in North by Northwest

Alfred Hitchcock used a narrative device in some of his films that he called a "MacGuffin." It is the thing that the characters care about, and that kicks off the plot, but the audience should not be concerned with it because it is ultimately irrelevant to the plot. 

He explained the term using a surreal anecdote about two men on a train, which he repeated in interviews for decades. Hitch claimed the term was a Scottish name, and he would tell the following joke to illustrate its inherent "emptiness."

Man A: "What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?"
Man B: "Oh, that’s a MacGuffin."
Man A: "What’s a MacGuffin?"
Man B: "Well, it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands."
Man A: "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands!"
Man B: "Well, then that’s no MacGuffin!" 

His point was that a MacGuffin is a purely mechanical element used to "trigger" the plot. 

Hitchcock’s personal favorite MacGuffin was the "government secrets" in North by Northwest. He called it his best because it was the emptiest. The hero asks what the villain is selling. The agent replies: "Oh, just government secrets." By refusing to even name the secrets, he proved that the object only exists to give the characters a reason to chase each other.

An additional origin note is that while Hitchcock popularized the term, he credited its creation to his friend and screenwriter Angus MacPhail. They likely chose the name because it sounded like a common Scottish surname, adding to the "nonsense" nature of the joke. Some film historians also point out that the word "guff" is British slang for "nonsense" or "empty talk," which fits the definition perfectly. 

Sometimes the MacGuffin is considered to be the same as a "red herring", but while both are plot devices used to manipulate the audience’s attention, they serve completely different structural purposes.

The MacGuffin is the motivation. It is the thing the characters are chasing. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as the characters want it badly enough to drive the story.

A non-Hitchcock example is the statue in The Maltese Falcon. Everyone is killing each other to find it, but it could have been any object that was considered valuable by the characters.

A red herring, as I have written earlier) is a clue, character, or plot point that is intentionally misleading. It’s designed to make you reach a false conclusion so that the eventual "twist" is more shocking.

In the Harry Potter book and movie series (especially in The Prisoner of Azkaban), we are led to believe that Sirius Black is a villain trying to kill Harry. Throughout much of the series, Snape is also seen as working to harm Harry, when in fact he is protecting him.