loan

Pluralloans

Formsloans, loaning, loaned

1. 1
   borrowed moneynouncountable

   A sum of money or property that a person or organization borrows from another and must return or repay later, often with interest.

   The bank approved a loan of fifty thousand dollars for the new business.

   Several student loans remained unpaid years after graduation.

   UsageYou take out or get a loan and pay it back; a bank gives or grants you one.

   Note

   The amount borrowed, set apart from any interest, is called the principal. W. B. Maxwell's The Mirror and the Lamp (1918) pairs corporation loans with railway debentures as the stuff of tedious financial talk.

2. 2
   act of lendingnouncountable

   The act of lending something, or permission to borrow it and use it for a time, as when a painting or a player is on loan.

   The library negotiated the loan of several rare manuscripts.

   The museum has the painting on loan from a private collector until next spring.

   UsageOften the loan of something; a thing lent for a time is on loan (on loan from a collector).

3. 3
   lend outverb

   To give something to someone for temporary use, with the expectation of getting it back; to lend.

   The neighbor agreed to loan us his ladder for the afternoon.

   The library will loan laptops to students who do not have one at home.

   UsageSame patterns as lend: loan someone something or loan something to someone. In British English, lend is the safer everyday choice.

   Similarlend

   Oppositeborrow

   Note

   Now chiefly an American verb, though Britain used it widely for centuries too. In an 1820 letter to James Monroe, William King writes of "having loaned Neilson" money.

4. 4
   borrowed wordnouncountable

   A word or phrase borrowed from another language and adopted into regular use.

   Swahili's vocabulary includes a large number of loans from Arabic.

   "Kindergarten" entered English as a direct loan from German.

   UsageFollowed by from and the source language: a loan from German. The longer loanword is the more common term.

   Similarborrowing

   Note

   A linguist's short form of loanword. Fittingly, loan is itself a loan: Middle English took it from Old Norse lán. The metaphor is a generous one, since unlike a loan of money, nothing is ever handed back.

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