cultural diffusion

In cultural anthropology, cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural items — such as ideas, styles, religions, technologies, languages — between individuals, whether within a single culture or from one culture to another. It is distinct from the diffusion of innovations within a specific culture. It was conceptualised by Leo Frobenius in his 1897. Cultural diffusion prevents a calque or loan translation, a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation