Borrower

How to spell borrower

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce borrower

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does borrower mean?

1. nounA person who takes and uses something belonging to someone else, with the intention of returning it, especially money from a lender.

Borrower in a sentence

• The bank assesses whether the borrower can repay the loan.

• Every borrower must sign the agreement before the funds are released.

Where does borrower come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb borgian, meaning 'to borrow' or 'to give a pledge', which itself came from borg, a noun meaning 'a pledge' or 'security'. The underlying idea was deeply tied to trust: to borrow something was to take it against a promise or guarantee of return, so the early sense leaned as much on the pledge as on the goods. The agent suffix -er, a native Germanic ending meaning roughly 'a person who does', was attached to give 'borrower', literally 'one who borrows'. The double r in the middle simply preserves the spelling of borrow, and that quiet, unstressed second syllable (the schwa in -row-) is where writers occasionally hesitate. The same borg root survives in modern German borgen, 'to borrow or lend', showing how closely the two opposite acts were once linked in the Germanic mind.

How the word is built

• borrow (from Old English borgian: to borrow, to lend)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)