loan

Etymology 1

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.

noun

1. (law, banking, finance) 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.
2. (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).
   All loans from the library, whether books or audio material, must be returned within two weeks.
   He got a loan of five thousand pounds.
   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. 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 2, in The Mirror and the Lamp
3. The contract and array of legal or ethical obligations surrounding a loan.
   He made a payment on his loan.
4. The permission to borrow any item.
   Thank you for the loan of your lawn mower.

verb

1. (usually ditransitive, US, dated and occasionally proscribed in UK, informal) To lend (something) to (someone).
   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. June 1 1820, William King, Letters to James Monroe: President of the United States, from William King
   All the rest—six out of eleven, more than half—were loaned to him. 1992, Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, page 30
   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. 2015, Joanne M. Flood, Wiley GAAP 2015: Interpretation and Application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, page 574

Etymology 2

See lawn.

noun

1. (Scotland) A lonnen.