Word.ws English Dictionary

borrowing

Syllables: bor·row·ing/ˈbɔrəwɪŋ/

borrowing verb: shoplifting. Also the present participle and gerund of borrow.

Verb

borrowing

  1. (euphemistic, slang, crime) Shoplifting.

Noun

borrowing (countable and uncountable, plural borrowings)

  1. An instance of something being borrowed.
    • January 1834, Horace Binney, Speech on the Question of the Removal of the Deposites
      Subscriptions, borrowings of money, taxings of the citizens and their property, may all be valid, as operations by virtue of laws for the government of the City […]
  2. A borrowed word, adopted from a foreign language; loanword.
    • Whilst you would be forgiven for thinking this statement comes straight from the latest UKIP manifesto, it is in fact a quotation from The Anglish Moot, a fan-page promoting the use of the 'Anglish' language — that is, English with all foreign borrowings stripped away.2017 March 25, Lili Bidwell, “Anglish: A Brexiteer’s lingua franca?”, in The Cambridge Student, archived from the original on 31 Jan 2021

Also used as

borrowing is also the present participle and gerund of borrow.

borrowing meaning in Gujarati

borrowing in Gujarati

ઉધાર લેવું

Examples of borrowing in a sentence

  • Borrowing money from him is like getting blood from a stone!
  • "Prêt-à-porter" is a French borrowing that refers to ready-to-wear clothing.
  • The annual percentage rate on the mortgage loan is 4.5%, indicating the cost of borrowing money on an annual basis, including interest and fees.

All 40 example sentences with borrowing

Forms of borrowing

pluralborrowings

Plural of borrowing: borrowings

Origin of borrowing

From borrow + -ing.

Words formed from borrowing

Phrases with borrowing

Questions about borrowing

What does borrowing mean?
Borrowing means shoplifting.
What is borrowing in Gujarati?
Borrowing in Gujarati is ઉધાર લેવું. See Borrowing meaning in Gujarati.
What part of speech is borrowing?
Borrowing can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce borrowing?
Borrowing is pronounced /ˈbɔrəwɪŋ/.

Words near borrowing in the dictionary

  1. borrowers
  2. borrowes
  3. borrowest
  4. borroweth
  5. borrowin'
  6. borrowing
  7. borrowing a leaf out of someone's book
  8. borrowing card
  9. borrowing cards
  10. borrowing days
  11. borrowing from Peter to pay Paul

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: borrowing (page history and authors); borrowing (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-borrowing.ogg.

Cite this entry: “borrowing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/borrowing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.