loan

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ləʊn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /loʊn/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊn
• Homophone: lone

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.

loan (plural loans)

1. (law, banking, finance) An act or instance of lending, an act or instance of granting something for temporary use.

   Synonyms: loaning, lending

   Because of the loan that John made to me, I was able to pay my tuition for the upcoming semester.

3. (law, banking, finance) 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).

   Synonym: principal

   All loans from the library, whether books or audio material, must be returned within two weeks.

   He got a loan of five thousand pounds.

   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter II, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     That the young Mr. Churchills liked—but they did not like him coming round of an evening and drinking weak whisky-and-water while he held forth on railway debentures and corporation loans. Mr. Barrett, however, by fawning and flattery, seemed to be able to make not only Mrs. Churchill but everyone else do what he desired.

4. The contract and array of legal or ethical obligations surrounding a loan.

   He made a payment on his loan.

5. The permission to borrow any item.

   Thank you for the loan of your lawn mower.

• (something borrowed): bailment

• (something borrowed): mutuum, commodatum

loan (third-person singular simple present loans, present participle loaning, simple past and past participle loaned)

1. (usually ditransitive, US, dated and occasionally proscribed in UK, informal) To lend (something) to (someone).
   • 1820 June 1, William King, Letters to James Monroe: President of the United States, from William King:

     In the course of a correspondence that passed between us at this period, he mentioned, to my utter astonishment, the fact of his having loaned Neilson 81000 to buy my bill on Maryland; and stated that he could not proceed to make the payment until Neilson refunded the money.

   • 1992, Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, page 30:

     All the rest—six out of eleven, more than half—were loaned to him.

   • 2015, Joanne M. Flood, Wiley GAAP 2015: Interpretation and Application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, page 574:

     Upon maturity of the debt, the investment bank returns the loaned shares.
     On the date of issuance, the entity should record the loaned shares at their fair value and recognize them as an issuance cost, with an offset to additional paid-in capital.

• This usage, once widespread in the UK, is now confined to the US (or perhaps parts thereof). The use of loan as a verb is occasionally disapproved of, especially when the object being lent is something other than money; as a consequence, lend is often preferred.

• loan on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

From Scottish Gaelic lòn (“marshy meadow”) (compare lèana (“wet meadow, marsh, meadow”)).

loan (plural loans)

1. (Scotland, Northern England) An area of uncultivated ground near a village or farmhouse.

   the Loan of Turchloy, the Black Loan

   • 1800, Alexander Pennecuik, Lintoun Green; Or, the Third Market-day of June, 1685: A Poem, in Nine Cantos, page 38:

     [...] The herds upon the loan, As if a sheep had fled, wi' speed, At Grumphy tykes hound on Wi' loud huzza!

   • 1856 [1822?], Sir Walter Scott, Waverley Novels, page 315:

     [...] meeting in the loan above the house his own great plough with the six oxen, which were the pride of his heart.

   • 1871, Henry Scott Riddell, The Poetical Works of Henry Scott Riddell, page 26:

     When the dews begin to fauld the flowers, and the gloaming shades draw on, When the star comes stealing through the sky, and the kye are in the loan, He whistles […]

• Joseph Wright, editor (1902), “LOAN”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: […], volume III (H–L), London: Henry Frowde, […], publisher to the English Dialect Society, […]; New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC.

• Laon, lona, nola, Anlo, NOLA, Alon, Nola

• IPA^(key): /ˈloɑn/, [ˈlo̞ɑ̝n]
• Rhymes: -oɑn
• Hyphenation^(key): lo‧an

loan

1. genitive singular of loka

• laon, olan

loan

1. third-person plural present indicative of loar

loan

1. third-person plural present indicative of loar

• (Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [lwaːn˧˧]
• (Huế) IPA^(key): [lwaːŋ˧˧]
• (Saigon) IPA^(key): [l⁽ʷ⁾aːŋ˧˧]

Sino-Vietnamese word from 鸞.

(classifier con) loan

1. hen-phoenix

Non-Sino-Vietnamese reading of Chinese 關 (SV: quan).

This morpheme reflects of a form of 關 (MC kwaen) descended from *k.rˤ- instead of *kˤr-.

Nohara (2023)^[1] is an in-depth treatment into the lexeme "egg" in Old Chinese, presenting etymologically related pairs such as 卵 (MC lwanX, “egg”) (lateral onset, from *k.rˤ-) and 𢺄 (“fish egg”) (velar onset, from *kˤr-) as evidence for complex onsets/consonant clusters in Old Chinese.

loan

1. (of news, chiefly in compounds) to spread

loan

1. Alternative form of lhoan
   • 1867, OBSERVATIONS BY THE EDITOR:

     F. broan, eeloan, hoan, loan, sthoan, sthroan.

     E. brand, island, hand, land, stand, strand.

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 14