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A Wanderwort ( , sometimes pluralized as Wanderwörter, usually capitalized following German practice) is a word that has spread as a loanword among numerous languages and cultures, especially those that are far away from one another. As such, Wanderwörter are a curiosity in historical linguistics and sociolinguistics within a wider study of language contact. At a sufficient time depth, it can be very difficult to establish in which language or language family a Wanderwort originated and into which it was borrowed.
Frequently, they are spread through trade networks, sometimes to describe a previously unfamiliar plant, animal or food.
Chocolate and tomato were both taken from Classical Nahuatl via Spanish into many different languages, although the specific origin of chocolate is obscure.
Farang, a term derived from the ethnonym Franks through Arabic, refers to foreigners (typically white and European ones). From the above two languages, the word has been loaned into many languages spoken on or near the Indian Ocean, including Hindi, Thai language, and Amharic, among others. It also existed in Russian in the form "фрязин" with the same meaning.
Kangaroo was taken from the Guugu Yimithirr word for the eastern grey kangaroo; it entered English through the records of James Cook's expedition of 1770 and through English to languages around the world.
Orange originated in a Dravidian language (likely Tamil language, Telugu language or Malayalam), and its likely path to English included, in order, Sanskrit, Persian, possibly Armenian, Arabic, Italian language, and Old French.
The words for 'horse' across many Eurasian languages seem to be related such as Mongolian морь (), Manchu language ᠮᠣᡵᡳᠨ (), Korean language 말 (), Japanese 馬 (), and Thai language ม้า (), as well as Sino-Tibetan languages like Mandarin 馬]] (). It is present in several Celtic languages and Germanic languages, whence Irish language marc and English mare.
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