Foreign Words and Phrases

Foreign words and phrases now naturalized into English maintain their original spelling (when imported from a Latin-based language), and diacritical markings are printed in Roman type.

• From French: carte blanche, de rigueur, déjà vu, fait accompli, faux pas, hors d’oeuvre, laissez faire, raison d’être (secondary variant: raison d’etre), vis-à-vis
• From German: ersatz, gestalt, realpolitik, Weltanschauung, Zeitgeist
• From Italian: a cappella, al fresco, cappuccino, espresso, punctilio, virtuoso
• From Japanese: hara-kiri, hibachi, samurai, tempura
• From Latin: ad nauseam, de facto, in loco parentis, modus operandi, sine qua non, sui generis
• From Spanish: aficionado, gringo, guerrilla, junta

Non-naturalized foreign terms, on the other hand, are italicized. When a non-naturalized import repeatedly appears in the text, it is italicized on the first mention and typically romanized after that.

The presence of a term in the main section of the dictionary is one indicator of naturalization. Nonetheless, specific entries in M- W Collegiate’s “Foreign Words and Phrases” supplement would pass muster in the Roman font for some audiences: de profundis, dies irae, sans souci, sayonara. A copyeditor must once again assess the readership: Will readers be confused if the word is written in Roman? Will readers be startled if the term is placed in italics?

Longer foreign phrases should be presented in Roman and surrounded by quotation marks, with the editing translation in parentheses.

The poem is a meditation on the proverb “Una mano no se lava sola” (A single hand cannot wash itself), although the phrase never appears in the poem itself.

Request that your copy editor double-check the quotations if you are unable to validate the spelling and grammar of foreign terminology.