borrow

UK/ˈbɒɹəʊ/US/ˈbɑɹ.oʊ/

verbA23 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,113 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: borrowed, borrowing, borrows

To borrow something is to take it with the promise of giving it back. A book from the library, a fiver from your brother, the neighbour's ladder for an afternoon.

The one thing to get right is the direction. You borrow FROM someone and they lend it TO you: I borrowed the money from Ove, Ove lent me the money. Never borrow me a pen. Banks and governments borrow too, and there what goes back is bigger than what came, because of interest. Languages borrow as well — English borrowed kindergarten from German and pyjamas from Urdu, and gave neither back. And there is borrowed time: living or lasting longer than anyone expected you to.

Definitions of borrow

1verbborrowTo take something belonging to someone else for a while and give it back later.A2~28%
“Can I borrow your charger until lunchtime?”
2verbmoneyTo take money from a bank or a person and pay it back with interest.B1~70%
“They borrowed thirty thousand to fix the roof.”
3verbwordTo take a word, idea or style from someone else and use it as your own.B2~2%
“The film borrows its ending from an older Japanese one.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

on borrowed time — lasting longer than expected, with the end coming

Where it comes from

Borrow was not about giving back at first, it was about the promise. Old English borgian meant to borrow, to lend, to stand surety for someone, and behind it sits a Proto-Indo-European root *bʰergʰ- meaning to take care. The care was in the pledge, not in the object — the same root lies under Old English beorgan, to save or preserve.

Proto-Indo-European
*bʰergʰ- — to take care
Proto-Germanic
*burgōną — to pledge, take care of
Proto-West Germanic
*borgōn
Old English
borgian — to borrow, lend, pledge surety for
Middle English
borwen
English, today
borrow

From Middle English borwen, from Old English borgian (“to borrow, lend, pledge surety for”), from Proto-West Germanic borgōn, from Proto-Germanic burgōną (“to pledge, take care of”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰergʰ- (“to take care”). Cognate with Dutch borgen (“to borrow, trust”), German borgen (“to borrow, lend”), Danish borge (“to vouch”). Related to Old English beorgan (“to save, preserve”). More at bury.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Verbs, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

borrow in the wild

Borrow or borrowing can mean: to receive (something) from somebody temporarily, expecting to return it.
Borrow
The overnight rate is generally the interest rate that large banks use to borrow and lend from one another in the overnight market.
Overnight rate
In the United States, the debt ceiling is a law limiting the total amount of money the federal government can borrow.
United States debt ceiling
An interest rate is the amount of interest due per period, as a proportion of the amount lent, deposited, or borrowed.
Interest rate
Each bank estimated what it would be charged were it to borrow from other banks.
Libor

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

borrower

Definitions of borrow

1verbborrowTo take something belonging to someone else for a while and give it back later.A2~28%

“Can I borrow your charger until lunchtime?”

2verbmoneyTo take money from a bank or a person and pay it back with interest.B1~70%

“They borrowed thirty thousand to fix the roof.”

3verbwordTo take a word, idea or style from someone else and use it as your own.B2~2%

“The film borrows its ending from an older Japanese one.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.