loaning

Pluralloanings

1. 1
   verbcolloquialUS

   Present participle and gerund of loan.

   The museum is loaning several paintings to a gallery overseas this year.

   Loaning rare books to other institutions requires careful tracking and handling.

   Note

   This -ing form belongs to a verb with an American, informal flavor: loan used where lend would also serve. It takes two objects, so you can say loaning a friend money or loaning money to a friend. In formal writing, lending is the safer choice. The same spelling also works as a noun for the granting of a loan and as an unrelated northern word for a country lane.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of granting a loan to a borrower.

   The loaning of public funds to private firms drew sharp criticism.

   Strict rules govern the loaning of museum artifacts to outside collections.

   Similarlending

   Oppositeborrowing

   Note

   The noun can name a practice or count single transactions. You can speak of the loaning of public funds in general, or use the plural loanings for separate acts. The US Interstate Commerce Commission's Bureau of Transport Economics and Statistics did this in 1952, setting the loanings of cars against their ownership. For a single instance, the shorter noun loan usually does the same work.

3. 3
   noundialectalNorthern EnglandScotlandUlstercountable

   A lane, especially a narrow track running between or toward fields.

   An old stone wall ran the whole length of the loaning.

   Children played in the loaning behind the row of cottages.

   Similarlane, track, path

   Note

   A northern word built from loanin, a spelling of the Northern English lonnen, with -ing added. It belongs to Scotland, Ulster and Northern England, and it keeps that company in John Buchan's "The Outgoing of the Tide" (1902), where a witch gathers herbs in dark loanings among kirkyairds and bairns. Outside those dialects, lane is the everyday word.

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