Word.ws English Dictionary

loan

UK/ləʊn//loʊn/

loan noun: an act or instance of lending, an act or instance of granting something for temporary use.

Noun (1)

loan (plural loans)

  1. 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.
    Synonyms:
    loaning, lending
  2. 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.
    Synonyms:
    principal
  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.
    • And while Thompson has yet to make a first-team appearance for Derby, he got experience playing for Braintree Town on loan in the National League earlier this season.
    • Eustace also said that there would be no option to bring in an emergency loan cover for as long as O'Donnell remains fit.2026 March 13, “Eustace 'confident' in O'Donnell after Vickers blow”, in BBC, archived from the original on 21 Apr 2026

Verb

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

  1. (US, ditransitive, informal, usually, dated and occasionally proscribed in UK) 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.1820 June 1, 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

Noun (2)

loan (plural loans)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland) An area of uncultivated ground near a village or farmhouse.
    • the Loan of Turchloy, the Black Loan
    • [...] The herds upon the loan, As if a sheep had fled, wi' speed, At Grumphy tykes hound on Wi' loud huzza!1800, Alexander Pennecuik, Lintoun Green; Or, the Third Market-day of June, 1685: A Poem, in Nine Cantos, page 38

loan meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

loan in Hindi

borrowed sum of money or other property
उधार udhār, क़र्ज़ qarz

loan in Tamil

borrowed sum of money or other property
கடன் kaṭaṉ

loan in Marathi

loan, debt
कर्ज karja

loan in Urdu

borrowed sum of money or other property
اُدھار udhār, قَرْض qarz, قَرْضَہ qarza, دَین dain
More languagesFewer languages
loan in Bengali
ধার dhar, করজ koroz, করজা korza
loan in Telugu
ఋణము r̥ṇamu, అప్పు appu, అప్పిచ్చు appiccu, అప్పుయిచ్చు appuyiccu
loan in Malayalam
ലോൺ lōṇ, വായ്പ vāypa
loan in Kannada
ಸಾಲ, ಋಣ, ಕಡ, ಎರವಿ
loan in Punjabi
ਕਰਜ਼ਾ, ਕਰਜ਼, ਲੋਨ
loan in Gujarati
લોન
loan in Odia
ଋଣ
loan in Assamese
ধাৰ dhar
loan in Nepali
ऋण, ऋण दिने
loan in Pashto
قرضه qarza
loan in Arabic
قَرْض qarḍ, إِعَارَة ʔiʕāra
loan in Malay
pinjaman
loan in Indonesian
pinjaman
loan in Thai
เงินกู้ ngən-gûu
loan in Vietnamese
sự vay, tiền cho mượn, cho mượn, cho vay
loan in Myanmar
ချေးငွေ hkye:ngwe

Examples of loan in a sentence

  • 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.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter II, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
  • [...] meeting in the loan above the house his own great plough with the six oxen, which were the pride of his heart.1856 [1822?], Sir Walter Scott, Waverley Novels, page 315:
  • 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[…]1871, Henry Scott Riddell, The Poetical Works of Henry Scott Riddell, page 26:

All 40 example sentences with loan

Synonyms of loan

Forms of loan

Noun
pluralloans
Verb
third-person singular presentloans
present participleloaning
past participleloaned
pastloaned

Plural of loan: loans

Origin of loan

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.

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

Words formed from loan

Phrases with loan

21 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with loan

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about loan

What does loan mean?
Loan means an act or instance of lending, an act or instance of granting something for temporary use.
What is loan in Hindi?
Loan in Hindi is उधार (udhār), क़र्ज़ (qarz). See Loan meaning in Hindi.
How do you use loan in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is loan?
Loan can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce loan?
Loan is pronounced /ləʊn/ (UK).
What is the plural of loan?
The plural of loan is loans.

Words near loan in the dictionary

  1. loaming
  2. loamless
  3. loams
  4. Loamshire
  5. loamy
  6. loan
  7. loan blend
  8. loan blends
  9. loan car
  10. loan cars
  11. loan coinage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: loan (page history and authors); कर्ज (Marathi) (page history and authors); ലോൺ (Malayalam) (page history and authors); loan (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); loan (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); loan (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); loan (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); loan (Nepali, 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-loan.ogg.

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