Library / English Dictionary

BORROW

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Get temporarily

Example:

May I borrow your lawn mower?

Classified under:

Verbs of buying, selling, owning

Hypernyms (to "borrow" is one way to...):

acquire; get (come into the possession of something concrete or abstract)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s something from somebody

Antonym:

lend (give temporarily; let have for a limited time)

Derivation:

borrower (someone who receives something on the promise to return it or its equivalent)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Take up and practice as one's own

Synonyms:

adopt; borrow; take over; take up

Classified under:

Verbs of buying, selling, owning

Hypernyms (to "borrow" is one way to...):

accept; have; take (receive willingly something given or offered)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s something from somebody

Credits

 Context examples: 

But there are many works well worth reading at the Park; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can borrow of Colonel Brandon.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

And then you won't know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket—a jay in borrowed plumes.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The pleasantness of the morning had induced him to walk forward, and leave his horses to meet him by another road, a mile or two beyond Highbury—and happening to have borrowed a pair of scissors the night before of Miss Bates, and to have forgotten to restore them, he had been obliged to stop at her door, and go in for a few minutes: he was therefore later than he had intended; and being on foot, was unseen by the whole party till almost close to them.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Mrs. Norris could not help thinking that some steady old thing might be found among the numbers belonging to the Park that would do vastly well; or that one might be borrowed of the steward; or that perhaps Dr.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Holmes was so charmed with one of them that he insisted on drawing it in his notebook, broke his pencil, had to borrow one from our host and finally borrowed a knife to sharpen his own.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Not a soul knew of it, but Colonel and Mrs. Forster, and Kitty and me, except my aunt, for we were forced to borrow one of her gowns; and you cannot imagine how well he looked!

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Before I left him I remembered what Jonathan put in his diary of the Professor's perturbation at reading something in an evening paper at the station at Exeter; so, seeing that Dr. Seward keeps his newspapers, I borrowed the files of "The Westminster Gazette" and "The Pall Mall Gazette," and took them to my room.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

You have been learning how to manage money, how to find affordable funds to borrow when you needed them instead of taking cash advances from credit cards, and the importance of having a solid credit rating

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

I was not so savagely independent as to say anything in reply, but that if ever I borrowed money of anyone, I would borrow it of her.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I borrowed a whetstone from Johansen.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)