ekslikke

Ekslikke is a term used in speculative linguistics and online glossaries to describe a particular pattern of semantic drift associated with loanwords. It refers to a situation where a word borrowed from one language is reinterpreted by different social groups within a multilingual community, producing a set of related but distinct senses.

Etymology and origin: The word ekslikke is a neologism coined within conlang and online glossary communities. It has no established provenance in real-world languages, and its form is treated as a fictional compound that signals a conceptual pattern rather than any specific etymology.

Mechanism and usage: In ekslikke, the borrowed item retains a core referent but acquires context-dependent extensions shaped by the communicative aims and social identities of subgroups. The result is a multipart polysemy spanning factions within a community, rather than a single, uniform meaning. For example, a loanword adopted in a tech forum might evolve to mean “protocol,” while in a youth or art collective it could come to signify “signal” or “rumor,” depending on local usage.

Distribution and reception: The concept is primarily discussed within hobbyist linguistic communities, conlangs, and speculative fiction studies. It is not part of mainstream linguistic theory and lacks formal empirical validation across languages.

See also: semantic shift, lexical borrowing, polysemy, lexical diffusion, constructed language.