In linguistics, a calque (/kælk/) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When 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 word or phrase (lexeme) in the target language. For instance, the English word skyscraper has been calqued in dozens of other languages, combining words for "sky" (or "clouds") and "scrape" in each language. Examples include wolkenkrabber in Dutch, gratte-ciel in French, Wolkenkratzer in German, grattacielo in Italian, matenrō (摩天楼) in Japanese, drapacz chmur in Polish, arranha-céu in Portuguese, neboskreb (небоскреб) in Russian, rascacielos in Spanish, skyskrapa in Swedish, and gökdelen in Turkish.
Calques, like direct borrowings, often function as linguistic gap-fillers, emerging when a language lacks existing vocabulary to express new ideas, technologies, or objects. This phenomenon is widespread and is often attributed to the shared conceptual frameworks across human languages. Speakers of different languages tend to perceive the world through common categories such as time, space, and quantity, making the translation of concepts across languages both possible and natural.