lent

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of lend.

   The bank lent the company two million dollars to open a second factory.

   Her calm voice lent the tense meeting a sense of order.

   Note

   A single form covers both past tenses: lent is the simple past (she lent me a pen) and the past participle after have or be (she has lent it before; the painting was lent to a museum). Lended is not standard. Keep the direction straight too: the giver lent and the receiver borrowed, and using lent to mean borrowed is widely criticized.

2. 2
   noun · Lentuncountable

   A period of the church year before Easter, traditionally marked by giving up certain foods and pleasures for a time.

   She gave up social media for Lent and found she slept better.

   Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent.

   Note

   The name was once simply a word for spring: it is shortened from Lenten, from Old English lencten, the season in which the days lengthen. Like Easter or Advent, it takes a capital and usually no article, so people keep Lent or give something up for Lent. Its forty days are counted differently from church to church, as the Western count and the Eastern one show.

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