Pop quiz, hot shot! Which of these are acceptable?
(1a) I lent him my favorite toaster oven on Maundy Thursday.
(1b) I loaned him my favorite toaster oven on Maundy Thursday.
Hopefully my phrasing of the question tipped you off that this was a trick. Both are acceptable! (Hence the are in the question.) I see your furrowed brow there. No, wait, that’s my furrowed brow in the reflection of my monitor. What am I doing, saying loaned is acceptable? Everyone knows that loan is the noun and lend is the verb. And I mean everyone. Heck, even books say it’s so. You just can’t loan somebody something. That would be as perfectly absurd as saying you borrowed somebody something.
Well, despite my furrowed brow and the beliefs of all those people I cited above, it turns out that loan is a verb, at least in American English, and has been for a while. In fact, according to the OED, loan has been used as a verb since about 1200 AD. Hmm. That’s funny, because the authors who tell you that loan is not a verb say things like “Although loan is creeping into use as a verb, we like the old rule [lend=verb,loan=noun]” (Nitty-Gritty Grammar), when in fact it’s the opposite — loan is creeping out of use as a verb. Lend has pretty much taken over for verbal loan in British English, so it’s only Americans who regularly use loan as a verb anymore, and even we’re drifting inexorably toward lend.
But returning to this so-called “old rule”, is anyone else as appalled by this quote as I am? Here’s a book making a claim that is not only incorrect, but really obviously incorrect. As in, it took me one minute to look this up in the Oxford English Dictionary to realize it was wrong. I understand that this book was published in 1998, before the Internet made it quite so easy to consult the OED, but really, are you telling me that no one at this publishing house even bothered to look at what’s considered to be the most definitive dictionary of the language when editing a book about grammar? And no one bothered to look at other contemporary grammar books, such as the Columbia Guide to Standard American English [1993], The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage [1996], or Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage [1989], either? As Gob Bluth would say, c’mon! I’m a stupid blogger, and I did more research in writing this stupid blogpost that makes me no money than the editors did for a book that they’re selling!
Do you see why I am so angry all the time? When I set out to do this post, I thought it was going to be short and sweet; I’d mention that loan is not a verb and then go home. I was convinced this was the case thanks to the lies the prescriptivists fed me in my younger years. And here I am, almost a quarter-century into my usage of the English language, and only now do I find out that the prescriptivists were blowing smoke. I feel betrayed. This is why I do this blog: I’m sick and tired of being fed whole-cloth lies, and it’s time to fight back.
Rhetoric aside, loan is and has for a while been an acceptable verb, just like lend. However, it should be noted, as the Columbia Guide to Standard American English points out, that there is a difference between verb loan and verb lend. Namely, loan can’t be used in figurative contexts:
(2) *Friends, Romans, countrymen: loan me your ears!
(3) *The small potted fern loans a nice organic touch to the soulless factory.
Otherwise, go ahead and use loan as a verb. Tell anyone who wants to complain that they’ll need to file a complaint 800 years in the past. I’m sure Chaucer will be receptive.
Summary: Loan is a fine verb. It’s been around as a verb since the 1200s; it’s not some new word creeping into the language that should be stopped. The only difference between the verbs loan and lend is that loan can’t be used in figurative senses. So go use loan as a verb, and when someone complains, hit them with the facts.
[p.s.: I am not the only one to have noticed this. In addition to the books I cited above, both Paul Brians‘s and John Lynch‘s websites debunk the anti-loan claims. So consider this a reminder of how good their advice is.]
Motivated Grammar 
27 comments
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April 8, 2008 at 8:45 am
Jonathon
The most infuriating thing of all, in my opinion, is when people will refute the facts of usage with arguments like “Just because people have done it in the past doesn’t make it right” or “Chaucer knew when to break the rules because he’d mastered them.”
April 8, 2008 at 9:50 am
Dan
As a Minnesotan, I’d go to bat for “borrowed somebody something” any time…
April 8, 2008 at 11:04 am
Gabe
Jonathon: Yeah. Those arguments suck. Especially when the person who’d ostenibly mastered breaking the rules in the service of style is someone whose style I find abysmal. I’m looking at you, Alexander Pope.
Dan: Sorry, I only meant to imply ditransitive “borrow” is as bad as verbal “loan”, not objectively bad. It’s completely non-standard for me, though. That’s the fun of regionalisms! Personally, I’d take a bullet for positive anymore or “needs cleaned”, despite the visible cringes that people respond to them with.
April 11, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Jonathon
My wife stopped using needs + past participle after I teased her about it. I still feel kind of bad about that. I haven’t bugged her about positive anymore, though.
July 6, 2009 at 11:52 am
Word Smith
You might more properly have asked, “Which of these is acceptable?” instead of, “Which of these are acceptable?”
July 11, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Gabe
Word Smith: If you read the first two sentences of the second paragraph, you will see why I said it that way.
August 22, 2009 at 3:39 pm
santo
In your summary paragraph on “loan”, I was disappointed to see “them” with “someONE” as an antecedent.
August 28, 2009 at 11:39 am
Gabe
santo: I am disappointed that you are disappointed. I consciously used singularly “them”. The crusade against singular “they/them” is misguided; it’s been used by great writers for ages (attested in the King James’ Bible, even), it’s semantically acceptable (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=89), and it avoids any issues about presuming the gender of the “someone”.
October 11, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Anita
What do “needs cleaned” and “positive anymore” mean?
October 27, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Frank Rizzo
funny I was not aware that anyone in the world spoke modern english in 1200 AD!! what is true is that it was in use in 1625 but was supplanted by “lend” … speak olde English it ye would but you may as well be talking in sanskrit!!!
October 28, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Gabe
Anita: “needs cleaned” and “positive anymore” are components of the Pittsburgh dialect. They are why I can say sentences like: “It seems the car always needs cleaned anymore,” which would make a standard English speaker’s brain explode. (The sentence I’ve quoted, by the way, means “It seems the car is always in need of a cleaning these days.”)
Frank: Dude, you ought to actually read a post if you’re going to comment on it. My point with the citation of Old English was merely that using “lend” as the only verb form isn’t an old rule at all. Also, your argument is flawed; verbal “loan” wasn’t supplanted in 1625 — people still use it.
November 25, 2009 at 8:09 am
Jack
You may be correct about the word “loan” Gabe, but your credibility is damaged by your incorrect use of the word “hopefully”.
November 25, 2009 at 9:18 am
Gabe
Jack: Your timing couldn’t be better. I’ve got a post explaining why “hopefully” is acceptable in the pipeline. In the meantime, check out this explanation: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hop2.htm
November 18, 2011 at 6:26 am
carol
Thank you. I saw loan used as a verb in a full page ad in the NYT – twice – and was appalled – well, annoyed anyway.
I still think it sounds wrong, but….
November 18, 2011 at 6:39 am
Jack
I give up; you can use any word you want for any meaning and I’ll figure out what you mean from the context. Please, don’t be a hypocrite and correct anyone else for any perceived error in grammar. The American dialect is irreparably damaged.
November 21, 2011 at 11:52 am
Gabe
Jack: It’s nothing so absurd as using any word for any meaning. It’s using hopefully in a way that’s been standard for a long time, as a sentential adverb (which is perfectly unnoteworthy for “luckily”, “happily”, “conveniently”, and so on). I would never, by comparison, use “glory” to mean “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”. And neither would anyone else, save for an absurd egg in Alice in Wonderland.
November 21, 2011 at 12:34 pm
Jack
Admittedly a bit of an overreaction on my part, but I _am_ genuinely trying to be open-minded. When people abuse grammar, which, in my opinion, is the case for the described modern uses of “loan” and “hopefully”, I can usually figure out what is meant from the context. Therefore, I should stop complaining and just communicate. I do insist that my children use proper, uncompromised grammar so that they don’t contribute to the continuous and unstoppable decline of the language. I have a question though: if one wants to describe a situation in which a person walks into a room while the person is hopeful that he might, for example, find a friend there, should one say, “Hopefully, he walked into the room?” In that you’ve adopted a new meaning for the word, you probably shouldn’t, because it would be confusing as to which meaning, classic or nouveau, was intended. That’s the problem with formal adoption of colloquial speech. I’m no grammarian, but I can see the problems with this sort of accommodation.
November 21, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Gabe
Jack: I appreciate your open-mindedness. The trick, I think, is that you’re sticking to an assumption that may not be valid. You’re assuming that English is in a “continuous and unstoppable decline”, but I really don’t think this is the case. Literacy rates are higher than they’ve ever been, and if you look at old personal letters, you’ll find them riddled with errors. (I read some of Darwin’s letters last year, and noticed a number of errors, just as an example.) The trouble isn’t necessarily that people are becoming worse at language, but rather that we’re recording more of our writing than ever before. When you think of older writing, you’re thinking of polished prose; when you think of modern writing, you’re thinking of emails.
Language has always been and will always be changing, and there’s nothing inherently right or wrong about that. We might want to slow the rate of change (after all, such changes are the reason why Shakespeare reads like riddles to modern readers), or even speed it up (to stop, for instance, defaulting to he when a person’s gender is not known). Some changes are clearly useful, such as the adoption of words for inventions that didn’t exist 50 years ago.
As for your “hopefully” example, yes, some amount of ambiguity is there that wasn’t there before its sentential usage took off. But the language adapts to this; sentential and non-sentential “hopefully” appear in different positions in general. Compare:
(1) Hopefully he entered the room.
(2) He hopefully entered the room.
It’s not that (1) has to have the sentential reading or that (2) has to have the non-sentential, but it’s very likely that these will be the intentions. (To get the opposite readings, I have to apply stress to hopefully or add a pause.)
And, as I often point out, language is rife with such ambiguities; just think of all the different things that mean can mean.
One final thought: of course there are problems in accepting linguistic changes, what you’re calling accommodation. I would never say there’s not. But there are problems too in being rigidly inflexible with usage – most notably that the language could pass you by. The question is which problems are worse, and to what extent a compromise between the positions can alleviate the problems.
November 22, 2011 at 7:36 am
Jack
Thanks for the discussion Gabe. We’ll just have to disagree on this. I don’t think that I’m rigidly inflexible, but I don’t see any advantage to increasing the amount of ambiguity in a language. For the word “hopefully”, if you deconstruct it, there’s no way it could have the modern corrupted meaning. It’s an adverb.
There is no dispute that the modern uses of words like loan and hopefully were born out of ignorance, and they have caught-on because most people just didn’t know any better. Of course, that’s one way that the language evolves, but most of these corruptions bring no advantage, and often cloud meaning. That’s why I won’t cooperate in the adoption of new definitions that weren’t in the dictionary, say, 50 years ago. At the same time, I’m sure I make many mistakes in grammar without realizing it, and I’m using the language in a manner that would have bordered on illiteracy long ago. Without a doubt I’m part of the problem, but I try to do as little damage as possible.
July 10, 2012 at 1:28 pm
Geroge Garsha
The American Language is a bastardization of good English. It’s shameful. Why change the rules when good grammar has always been good grammar?
September 22, 2013 at 2:09 am
Chris
Whatever the usage and for however long it has been such usage, I still consider loan to be a noun only. Lend does the job as a verb so loan is not needed for that purpose. Also, the article itself points out that loan cannot be used in the figurative sense, so why muddy the waters by allowing it to be a verb at all?
July 19, 2014 at 1:46 pm
Dejong
Thank you!
September 11, 2015 at 8:46 pm
yohannes beyene
As an African English speaking person , I have to learn ( teach ) you the proper use of the word ” loan”.
The word ” loan ” is first a noun but may be used as verb.
When used as a noun, it must always be followed by an article , a noun or a pronoun as follows:
Can I get a loan of $500?
I am happy you gave me a loan of $500..
Can you give me the details of the loan you gave me?
Otherwise, the examples above may be re-phased using the word ” lend” as follows:
Can you lend me $500?
I am happy you lent me $500.
Can you give me the details on the $500 you lent me?
For the word ” loan ” to be used in any sentence, as a noun , the object has to be a tangible object such as cash, car , house , etc.
For the word ” loan ” to be used in any sentence, as a verb , the object has to be an intangible object and may only used to communicate and stress ideas as follow:
Loan me your ears, so that I can hear what you heart.
I will loan you my heart , so you may feel my pain.
When one uses either word, if one feels the pain in the ears , one must admit the usage is wrong.
September 11, 2015 at 9:16 pm
yohannes beyene
Sorry , the line above :
“Loan me your ears, so that I can hear what you heart.”
Should have been:
“Loan me your ears, so that I can hear what you hear.”
September 12, 2015 at 5:11 am
Jack
Might as well make “heart” a verb too… :)
September 22, 2015 at 11:49 pm
yohannes beyene
English is always evolving and changing .
Boycott was a noun , someone’s last name, that then became a verb as well.
Google was a noun, a company ‘s name, that then is used as a verb as well.
The same can be said for Xerox, FedEx , E-mail , PDF and text among others.
Having said that, there are some nouns used as verbs that offend and hurt the ears, that we should avoid for now.
” I heart New York, I heart football…..’
That hurts the ears!
March 8, 2017 at 10:34 pm
Chuck McCarthy
I at least agree that you are just a stupid blogger