wanderword

plural wanderwords · alternative wander word · alternative wander-word

1. human sciencesSynonym of Wanderwort (“a loanword that has spread to many different languages, often through trade or the adoption of foreign cultural practices”).

   It is perhaps, therefore, a late 'wander-word' of the southeast of the IE world, Semitic and Sumerian.

   1997, James P. Mallory, Douglas Q. Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture

   3 more examples

   Considering the mileage it has achieved as a horizon wanderword in divers shapes representable as sV(l)mV(n)-, the Latin salmo (salmonis) cited by Pliny and Ausonius is vexing as regards its etymology, a quality it shares with many other Roman and Greek [...]

   1985, A. Richard Diebold, The evolution of Indo-European nomenclature for salmonid fish

   In this general context, Mallory's dismissal (1989, 150) of this “comparison that simply will not go away” as a mere “wander word” clearly illustrates his ideological position.

   2006, Martin Bernal, Black Athena. Volume III. The Linguistic Evidence, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, page 605

   Like the static Bangla she describes in the extract above — and like the traditional mother — Mukherjee's wanderwords usually stay at home, in narrative strands set in India, their local colour harmoniously interwoven with her fiction's literary English.

   2009, Jopi Nyman, Post-national enquiries

   Synonyms: Wanderwort