In linguistics, a calque ( /ˈkælk/) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word (Latin: "verbum pro verbo") or root-for-root translation.

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 lexeme in the target language.

"Calque" itself is a loanword from a French noun, and derives from the verb "calquer" (to trace, to copy), while loanword is a calque of the German "Lehnwort", and loan translation — a loan translation of "Lehnübersetzung".

Proving that a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation than does an untranslated loanword, since in some cases a similar phrase might have arisen in both languages independently. This is less likely to be the case when the grammar of the proposed calque is quite different from that of the language proposed to be borrowing, or the calque contains less obvious imagery.

Calquing is distinct from phono-semantic matching. While calquing includes (semantic) translation, it does not consist of phonetic matching (i.e. retaining the approximate sound of the borrowed word through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existent word or morpheme in the target language).