Borrow vs. Lend vs. Loan

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is Kathy from Wyoming.

Hi, Kathy. How can we help you?

Well, I’ve been perplexed for quite a long time about someone who will say they’re going to borrow you something instead of loan it to you.

Like, for instance, they’ll show up at the door and say, I was wondering if you would borrow me a cup of sugar.

Interesting.

This is something you hear a lot there in Wyoming?

Well, no, not an awful lot, but it seems like it just comes out of the blue sometimes, and I’m always taken aback.

Where in Wyoming are you, Kathy?

Riverton.

Riverton, okay.

Where in the state is that?

That is kind of central west, sort of west of Casper.

Yeah, I’m just curious at all.

You know, this borrow-lend or borrow-loan confusion is fairly common in English.

You may even hear it on television and the radio sometimes.

Yes, I have.

And Martha, we’ve dug into this question before, right?

Borrow and lend.

And there’s a really interesting thing that I want to relate to and try not to make it too wonky.

Linguists who look into this confusion, they notice that there’s something particular about this kind of confusion.

There’s only one thing different, really, about borrow and lend.

And it’s actually which direction the thing is traveling.

Is it going from person A to person B, or is it going from person B to person A?

And actually, who’s doing the speaking?

This is why the confusion is so obviously easy to do, is because the two words are actually remarkably alike in every other aspect.

And we see the same confusion happen in other word pairs, which are also almost exactly the same, except for the direction in which something travels.

For example, teach and learn are often confused.

You might think of in Mark Twain, I’m going to learn you a lesson, right?

Because the thing is that which way is the information traveling?

To A to B or B to A?

And we’ll also see it in bring and take.

Yeah, we get that question a lot.

Again, two verbs that are almost exactly alike except in the direction that the thing is traveling.

Or who is doing the bringing or the receiving or the giving, right?

They’re very similar.

And so what’s happening here is that there’s a cognitive kind of dysfunction.

Function. There’s just a mistake that happens in the brain, but it happens a lot. And people come out with barrow.

And sometimes so many people come out with barrow that it becomes ensconced in the dialect.

And so you will find in some of the Caribbean dialects of English, barrow is pretty much the standard word for Lent.

And you’ll also find in some languages around the world, the word for barrow and Lent is the same.

Older dialects of Gaelic, some dialects of Arabic.

But I have to say borrow and lend feel very, very different to me, don’t they, to you?

Yes, it does. It just seems wrong somehow to have someone say, well, if you’d like, I can loan that to you.

And instead of that, they say, anytime you want to, I’ll borrow that to you.

Right. When I hear borrow, I think, I’m not going to get that back.

Exactly. Yeah. Lending is different. It’s definitely non-standard.

Even though I tend to be fairly kind of open for people can say things any way they want, it’s one of those things you really want to avoid saying when you’re in a formal situation or if a job is in the line.

Or if you’re going to the bank, will you borrow me some money for a house?

You kind of probably want to use the proper verb there, right?

But you’re right to be just a little bit tweaked by it because all of your signals, all of your education, your experience are telling you, wait a second, wait a second, this verb is not quite right.

And yet, so many people make the mistake, you kind of have to look at the reason why and go, okay, it’s kind of a forgivable mistake because these words are so similar.

Lots of people are making this mistake.

I get why they’re doing it.

I’m going to try not to make that mistake myself, right?

I don’t know.

I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that kind of makes sense, but it still sounds wrong to me.

I’m with Kathy on this.

There’s no argument about it sounding wrong, but just trying to explain the mistake sometimes is just as interesting as noticing the mistake in the first place.

All right, Kathy, well, thank you for calling.

Thanks, Kathy. Bye-bye.

Okay, thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

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