She invites us to lend an ear to the Word of Life and to open our heart to Jesus' call to be his disciples. Government and the business community should lend an ear to these campaigns.Īnthropologists lend an ear to the plurality of voices and common or dissident perspectives. Our team will be happy to lend an ear to the environmental problems you face and to offer you innovative advice, in shades of green of course! Yet, they lend an ear, and can confirm they are a consistent and stabilizing resource in the work life of the learner.Ī day before the procedure, Melissa calls the patients to ensure they are ready-but often, to also lend an ear.Īs O'Brien awaits these decisions, the one coach who could perhaps best relate is willing to lend an ear. If the Conservative Party wants to lend an ear to what the public wants, it must focus on more than a single province. They ask for letters and are impatient to hear back from any friends who are willing to lend an ear. Let us lend an ear to the icy tale of the North wind about the mysteries of winter and its magical holidays! Scherschel knows this from experience: he was recently involved in an accident, and was happy for anyone willing to lend an ear. He was always ready to lend an ear and found time to listen to us and help us.Īnd don't be afraid to lend an ear to voices that seem monomaniacal or self-marginalizing, offensive or extreme. She would cheerfully lend an ear to her many friends, and always offered thoughtful and generous words of encouragement or advice, if asked. If you need any help getting started, I would be happy to lend an ear or a hand. They lend an ear, they share words of praise and they always want to open their hearts to us. Some British dictionaries ( Collins, 1991) and the Canadian Oxford (1998) still echo the inhibition, while data from the BNC shows that many British writers are comfortable with it.The two sitting Conservative Ward Councillors work very hard on local issues and are always ready to lend an ear or a helping hand.īesides, a true friend is always ready to lend an ear when a person is under too much stress to handle. This seems to be the basis on which British usage commentators argue that loan must be used only as a noun (except in banking and finance) and lend as a verb. Fowler (1926) noted that it had been 'expelled' from southern British English, but that it was still used 'locally in the UK.' Yet Gowers writing after World War II found it returning to British government writing (1948, 1954) and weighs in against it in his 1965 edition of Fowler as a 'needless variant' (1965). The word was used in Britain up to C17, but a curious resistance seems to have developed there during C18 and C19, when the Oxford Dictionary (1989) citations are all from the US, and the word somehow acquired provincial associations. "In American and Australian English, the verb loan is readily used as an alternative to lend in such applications-but not so much in contemporary British English. But for other senses, as when property or money pass temporarily from one owner to another, either word could be used. Only lend carries the figurative senses of adding or giving, as in lend strength to the cause or lend color to an otherwise routine event. "These are sometimes interchangeable, sometimes not.( The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., 2000) The allusions lend the work a classical tone." Loan is, however, used to describe only physical transactions, as of money or goods for figurative transactions, lend is correct: Distance lends enchantment. The frequent objections to the form by American grammarians may have originated from a provincial deference to British critics, who long ago labeled the usage a typical Americanism. "The verb loan is well established in American usage and cannot be considered incorrect.(Jack Lynch, The English Language: A User's Guide, Focus, 2008) My advice: don't be bothered by loan as a verb but, if you want to avoid irritating those who have this hangup, it's never wrong to use lend." There's not much reason for the anxiety- loan has been a verb since around the year 1200, and I think an 800-year probation is long enough for anyone-but it's now little used in America. "Some people are bothered by the word loan as a verb, preferring to use lend in its place.Bernstein, Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblin's, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971) If you are not offended by 'Friends, Romans, countrymen, loan me your ears' or by 'Distance loans enchantment,' you may go along with the dictionaries and you will always have a defense." "Although most expert users of English dislike loan as a verb ('I loaned him my pen'), except in financial contexts, it must be acknowledged that the usage is sanctioned by dictionaries.
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