loan.
An act or instance of lending, an act or instance of granting something for temporary use.
Meaning & usage
An act or instance of lending, an act or instance of granting something for temporary use.
Because of the loan that John made to me, I was able to pay my tuition for the upcoming semester.
A sum of money or other property that a natural or legal person borrows from another with the condition that it be returned or repaid over time or at a later date (sometimes with interest).
All loans from the library, whether books or audio material, must be returned within two weeks.
He got a loan of five thousand pounds.
The contract and array of legal or ethical obligations surrounding a loan.
He made a payment on his loan.
The permission to borrow any item.
Thank you for the loan of your lawn mower.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English lone, lane, from Old Norse lán, from Proto-Germanic *laihną, from Proto-Indo-European *leykʷ- (“to leave (over)”). Cognate with Icelandic lán, Swedish lån, Danish lån, German Lehen (“fief”), Dutch leen (“fief”), West Frisian lien, North Frisian leen (“fief; loan; office”), Scots lane, lain, len, Old English lǣn. More at lend.
To lend (something) to (someone).
Where this word comes from
From Middle English lone, lane, from Old Norse lán, from Proto-Germanic *laihną, from Proto-Indo-European *leykʷ- (“to leave (over)”). Cognate with Icelandic lán, Swedish lån, Danish lån, German Lehen (“fief”), Dutch leen (“fief”), West Frisian lien, North Frisian leen (“fief; loan; office”), Scots lane, lain, len, Old English lǣn. More at lend.
An area of uncultivated ground near a village or farmhouse.
Where this word comes from
From Scottish Gaelic lòn (“marshy meadow”) (compare lèana (“wet meadow, marsh, meadow”)).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.