# loan

Pronunciation: say "LOHN" US /loʊn/, UK /ləʊn/

## Noun

1. A sum of money or property that a person or organization borrows from another and must return or repay later, often with interest.
   - Simple: Money you borrow, for example from a bank, and must pay back later, often with extra money called interest.
   - _The bank approved a loan of fifty thousand dollars for the new business._
   - _Several student loans remained unpaid years after graduation._
2. 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.
   - Simple: When something is lent to someone for a time, so they can use it and then give it back.
   - _The library negotiated the loan of several rare manuscripts._
   - _The museum has the painting on loan from a private collector until next spring._
4. A word or phrase borrowed from another language and adopted into regular use.
   - Simple: A word that one language has taken from another language and now uses as its own.
   - _Swahili's vocabulary includes a large number of loans from Arabic._
   - _"Kindergarten" entered English as a direct loan from German._

## Verb

3. To give something to someone for temporary use, with the expectation of getting it back; to lend.
   - Simple: To give someone something to use for a while, expecting to get it back.
   - _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._

## Other meanings

- (noun) A patch of untilled ground lying near a village or farmhouse.

## Origin

From Middle English lone, from Old Norse lán, going back to Proto-Germanic *laihną and the Proto-Indo-European root *leykʷ- ("to leave over"). It is related to Icelandic lán, Swedish lån, Danish lån, and German Lehen ("fief"), and is connected to the verb lend.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/loan (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).