Word.ws English Dictionary

reborrowing

reborrowing noun: a word that passed from language A into language B and thence back into language A. Such words may have changed in meaning and/or form. Also the present participle and gerund of reborrow.

Noun

reborrowing (plural reborrowings)

  1. A word that passed from language A into language B and thence back into language A. Such words may have changed in meaning and/or form.
    • The word flan itself is a relatively recent addition to English, adopted on our behalf from French by the chef Alexis Soyer (a Frenchman working in England), but in that form it is in fact simply a reborrowing of a word which originally crossed the Channel in the 13th century as flawn, denoting...1990, John Ayto, “flan”, in Dictionary of Word Origins, New York: Arcade, →ISBN, page 230
  2. Something reborrowed.
    • The borrower will usually argue that the accordion should be considered as a reborrowing of debt already repaid, and therefore should be a redraw of tranche A first.2020, John Gilligan, Mike Wright, Private Equity Demystified, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 214

Also used as

reborrowing is also the present participle and gerund of reborrow.

Forms of reborrowing

pluralreborrowings

Questions about reborrowing

What does reborrowing mean?
Reborrowing means a word that passed from language A into language B and thence back into language A. Such words may have changed in meaning and/or form.
What part of speech is reborrowing?
Reborrowing is a noun.
What is the plural of reborrowing?
The plural of reborrowing is reborrowings.

Words near reborrowing in the dictionary

  1. reborning
  2. rebornness
  3. reborns
  4. reborrow
  5. reborrowed
  6. reborrowing
  7. reborrowings
  8. reborrows
  9. rebottle
  10. rebottled
  11. rebottler

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reborrowing (page history and authors). 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:

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