Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, Loan Me Your Ears?

William Shakespeare, by Gerard Soest

Friends, Romans and Countrymen, loan me your ears? Hardly. That was definitely not what Mark Antony said. We know the opening of the speech from Julius Caesar well enough to know that Shakespeare did not use the noun “loan” for the verb “lend,” yet that—even in the face of our overwhelming familiarity with the quotation from Julius Caesar—is what 99 percent of Americans today do. Ms. Picky fails to understand why. Let’s discuss the distinction between the two words.

Lend

“Lend” is a verb, the principal parts of which are lend, lent, and [has/had] lent:

I left my wallet home; can you lend me twenty dollars?

She lent him some quarters for the bus.

He had lent her enough to start her own gourmet catering business.

If Cecilia doesn’t have quite enough to buy the apartment, 
her friend will lend her the rest.

Loan

“Loan” is, and has only ever been, a noun:

He gave us the loan of his house in Goa.

He took out a loan to buy an antique Bugatti.

Home loans were extended to people who couldn’t afford them.

To make an analogy in terms of use, let’s use some other noun, e.g., meal. One can give someone a meal, but one cannot meal someone, because meal is not a verb. Just so. And one can give someone a loan, but he cannot loan someone something, because loan is not a verb.

Unlike other pairs of words that are confused (such as, for example, lie and lay) because one form of one looks like another form of the other, there is no crossover here. There is no excuse whatsoever for using the noun loan for the verb lend; the two words are not even the same part of speech. If someone gives someone else a loan [noun], he lends [verb] him money. End of story.

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Journalism Wall of Shame

The Journalism Wall of Shame displays errors in grammar, punctuation, or language that have appeared recently in the press. Submissions are welcome. Please include the publication's name and date, the story title, and the reporter's name. The publication of these errors in no way places blame for them on a particular person. Sometimes it is the reporter, sometimes an editor, sometimes a headline-writer, but—somewhere in the system—somebody should have known better.

As examples of the very thing Ms. Picky addresses above, she cites the following three examples, which, unfortunately, were all too easy to find: 


“The Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, Italy, had loaned Girolamo Romano’s 1538 painting, Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue, to the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee. . . .”
—“Arts Beat: Authorities in Florida Seize Painting on Loan to a Museum,” Patricia Cohen, New York Times, November 4, 2011

“Such an ignominious end to the Indian Arts Museum was not what Laurance Rockefeller had in mind when he loaned the David T. Vernon Collection to Grand Teton National Park in 1972.”
—“Condition of Rare Indian Artifacts Reveals Deficiencies at National Park Service Museum,” Scott Streater, New York Times, October 13, 2011

“They would live informally at the Mill . . . loaned to them for a peppercorn rent by the City of Paris.” 

—“Culture, Design: Wallis Simpson, ‘That Woman’ After the Abdication,”  Anne Sebba, New York Times, November 1, 2011 (adapted from Ms. Sebba’s not-yet-published book, That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor). [Let us hope that Ms. Seba, her editor, or a proofreader will pick up the error before her book goes to print!]

Ms. Picky’s only additional comment is a long, despairing sigh.

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Bulletin Board

To Q.R.: You’re perfectly correct about the spelling of the word leeching. I’m afraid that what your contractor intended to write was not leeching, but leaching.


Leaching is the draining away or leakage of certain liquid components either from a container or from other liquids. In your case, oil from your damaged in-ground oil tank was leaching into the surrounding soil.


Leeching, on the other hand, is the practice of applying leeches for the medical purpose of bloodletting. It is an ancient practice that was once discredited, but is again gaining some limited popularity in certain treatments. (If you want to know what leeches look like in the wild, rent The African Queen, and watch Katharine Hepburn removing them from a shuddering and horrified Humphrey Bogart, after he has immersed himself in the river and the little suckers have attached themselves to his skin.)

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