Calques translate a foreign phrase word by word, which is how English gained expressions like flea market from French.

The longer version

Flea market is not a borrowed word at all but a translation: the French phrase for an open-air second-hand market was rendered piece by piece, so each native word replaced its counterpart. Nothing foreign survives in the sound, which is why speakers rarely suspect the source.

German supplied the same kind of construction for viewpoint and standpoint, and Dutch and French have returned the favour with translated phrases of their own. Calques spread fast in bilingual communities, where speakers map an idiom directly onto another language. They differ from loanwords, which import the sound, and from cognates, which descend from a shared ancestor.

Where this entry sits

This category gathers small surprises about the English language, from odd spelling rules to words that quietly hide their own history. Expect palindromes, punctuation oddities, borrowed terms, and the strange ways writing systems record spoken speech. The full list sits on the Words and Language page, where every entry is listed in order.