borrowing

Pluralborrowings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   An act or occasion of taking and using something for a while before returning it.

   The library encourages the borrowing of books for up to three weeks.

   Repeated borrowing from petty cash left the drawer empty by Friday.

   Oppositelending

   Note

   As a noun it counts both ways. For the general activity it takes no plural and usually an of-phrase (the borrowing of books), unlike the verbal form, which takes a direct object (borrowing books). For separate transactions it pluralizes. Horace Binney, speaking in 1834 on the removal of the deposits, sets "borrowings of money" beside subscriptions and taxings.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of borrow.

   He is borrowing money to cover the deposit.

   Borrowing without asking first can damage a friendship.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs: after be it builds the progressive (she is borrowing my pen), and on its own it acts as a noun (borrowing money is risky). It carries every meaning of borrow: taking a loan, adopting an idea or a word, even the subtraction step in arithmetic. In Malaysia, Singapore and the West Midlands borrow can also mean "lend" (borrowing him my car), a use widely proscribed.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A word adopted into a language from a foreign one; a loanword.

   Linguists identify 'kindergarten' as a borrowing from German.

   Japanese contains numerous borrowings from English, reshaped to fit its sound system.

   Similarloanword, loan

   Note

   Linguists use the word on two levels. A borrowing is a single adopted word, such as kindergarten. Borrowing, with no article, is the process by which one language takes words from another and often reshapes their spelling, sound or grammar. Loanword names only the first. The idea fuels purist projects such as "Anglish", which Lili Bidwell wrote about in 2017, an English defined by the borrowings it refuses.

4. 4
   verbslangeuphemistictransitive

   A slang and humorous term for shoplifting, taking goods from a store without paying.

   Two teens spent the afternoon borrowing snacks from the convenience store.

   He laughed about borrowing a phone charger he never intended to pay for.

   Similarstealing, pinching, swiping, nicking, lifting

   Note

   A euphemism that works by understatement. It takes the innocent vocabulary of the everyday verb, and the joke depends on everyone knowing nothing will come back. Because the word looks exactly like ordinary borrowing, only context signals the theft: a store, a wink, goods never paid for. Keep it to casual talk. In reports, statements or legal writing, call it shoplifting or theft.

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