Borrowing

//ˈbɔrəwɪŋ// noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An instance of something being borrowed. countable, uncountable

    "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. 2
    the appropriation (of ideas or words etc.) from another source wordnet
  3. 3
    A borrowed word, adopted from a foreign language; loanword. countable, uncountable

    "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."

  4. 4
    obtaining funds from a lender wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of borrow form-of, gerund, participle, present

    "She is borrowing my pen."

  2. 2
    Shoplifting. euphemistic, slang

Synonyms

All synonyms
accounts payableaccounts receivableadoptionamount dueappropriationautoplagiarism

Example

More examples

"Is there any chance of my borrowing your typewriter?"

Etymology

From borrow + -ing.

Related phrases

borrowing cardfalse borrowinglearned borrowingpseudo-borrowingsemantic borrowingsemi-learned borrowing

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.