Borrowing a foreign word can express a stronger moral judgment than the native term

Evidence

The word that Sandra uses to describe the gypsies ( koszos ) is not a Romanian word, but a Hungarian one. It is a rather general practice in Transylvania to sometimes use Hungarian words to convey some meanings that a seemingly equivalent Romanian word does not convey. Sandra uses the more extreme term koszos to express and ascribe a moral quality to the Romanies instead of the milder Romanian equivalent murdar (literally translatable as ‘dirty’). — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 628

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how koszos vs. murdar differ in moral charge and why a Hungarian loanword is used.