Reborrowing
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 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 some sort of custard tart or cheesecake."
- 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."
- 1 present participle and gerund of reborrow form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"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 some sort of custard tart or cheesecake."
More for "reborrowing"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.