phono-semantic matching

English

Alternative forms

• PSM (initialism)

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “coined by Ghil'ad Zuckermann in 1999?”)

Noun

Examples
French génie (“genie”) from Arabic جِنِّيّ (jinniyy, “demon, genie”), given that génie already meant “guardian spirit” or “daemon”, a sense borrowed from Latin genius. Icelandic tækni (“technology”), from tæki (“tool”), matching Danish teknik in pronunciation and meaning. Cherokee ᎠᎹᏰᏟ (amayetli, “United States”), from ᎠᎹ (ama, “water”) and ᎠᏰᏟ (ayetli, “center”), modeled after English America

phono-semantic matching (usually uncountable, plural phono-semantic matchings)

1. (linguistics) The borrowing of a word into one language from another which completely or partially preserves both the original sound and meaning but does so via substitution of etymons.

Translations

borrowing

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 音義兼譯 / 音义兼译

• Finnish: vierassanaa äänteellisesti ja merkityksellisesti jäljittelevä uudismuodoste (no exact equivalent)
• French: please add this translation if you can
• German: phono-semantische Angleichung f
• Hebrew: תשמו״ץ
• Polish: kalka fonosemantyczna f

See also

• loanword
• unadapted borrowing