noun, plural ferries. 1. a commercial service with terminals and boats for transporting persons, automobiles, etc., across a river or other comparatively small body of water. 2. a ferryboat.
Examples and related terms. A loanword is distinguished from a calque (loan translation), which is a word or phrase whose meaning or idiom is adopted from another language by translation into existing words or word-forming roots of the recipient language.
The abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakers adopting words from a source language into their native language. Loan and borrowing are of course metaphors, because there is no literal lending process. There is no transfer from one language to another, and no returning words to the source language. The words simply come to be used by a speech community that speaks a different language from the one these words originated in. Borrowing is a consequence of cultural contact between two language communities.