LOAN vs. LENT

[Dan L. Coleman]

Don't know about you but I'm tired of seeing even so-called educated, accomplished people misusing the word "loaned" as "lent." After a while it seems to become acceptable, but I suspect because the users are ignorant of the difference. There is no such legitimate thing in the English lexicon as loaned as the past tense of lent. Unless I'm so far behind the times I should be shot, or the rules have changed in the last few years. Tell me if I'm wrong.

More than one of my foreign-born college professors, for example, whose English was a second language, years ago informed their classes that English was the most precise and expressive language on the planet, one in which there was a word for ANY thought or idea, verb, noun, or modifier, to the extent not evident, or anywhere near it, in any other language. So should our language be corrupted to the point we might sound like the less descriptive, less precise others? I mean, I don't lose sleep over this thing, but it does bother me.

[Dan L. Coleman]

Loaned vs. lent, yeah.

[Jack Getze]

Past tense of lend is lent. Is there a difference between loan and lend?

[I. J. Parker]

Webster's recognizes "loan" as a verb and an alternative to "lend".

[Dan L. Coleman]

You don't loan someone money, for instance(you lend it), as I see it, just as you haven't loaned it but have lent it. I guess.

[I. J. Parker]

It may depend on the region.  Certainly "lend" is the more commonly used.

[Dana King]

I've never heard of an bank that writes a mortgage called a loaner; they're lenders, even though they offer loans.

To borrow a legal term, this may be a distinction without a difference.

[Andrew Drummond]

The Online Dictionary defines LOANED as a noun.  It defines LENT as the "Past tense and past participle of lend".  So you are spot on.

One of my 92 year old mother's favourite sayings is "neither a borrower or a lender be."  If only life was that easy...

 

[I. J. Parker]

Well, "loaned" has to be a verb.  A second check on the Internet revealed that the UK switched from loan to lend early in the 19th century, but that Americans continued to use "loan" as a verb. It became associated with provincialism.  :)   I suppose by now, lend is the clear winner. My Webster's is Webster's Seventh and still lists "loan".

[Alex Sweeney]

Do you mean loaned as the past tense of lend? I always thought of loaned as an American idiom but looking into it further it seems that if I took out a loan I would be within my rights to say that somebody loaned me the money; but if I borrowed it from my cousin, then I would probably have to say they lent me it.

Had no idea there was such controversy surrounding these words. Interesting.

[I. J. Parker]

"Loaned" would be the past tense of "loan" (the verb).  No controversy, just changing language and some differences between two countries.