Choosing the right words: Borrow, lend, rent and hire

Knowing when and how to use these common English words is crucial for smooth communcation. This article explains it clearly and concisely.

Whoever you are, perhaps a persistent hoarder, or even a millionaire, there always comes a time when you need something for a short time that you do not possess yourself such as a lawnmower, a van, a tent, or simply money. In this case you must find a way to get the item and unless you have plenty of money buying it is not always the answer so it comes down to borrowing and lending, renting and hiring. To ensure smooth procurement it is important to choose the right word. For example, your neighbour may have a high quality lawnmower which he would happily lend to you (you would borrow it from him), but it could cause some confusion or even offence if one or other of you used the word rent in connection with the friendly borrowing of the that piece of garden equipment. So here is the first simple rule; when money is not involved then you can completely forget about rent and hire. In this friendly case you borrow the lawnmower from your neighbour and he lends it to you.

However, borrow [bɒrəʊ] and lend [lend] do not always only describe such simple acts between friends, family and neighbours. Both borrow and lend are used in connection with money, especially in connection with bank products such as loans. Imagine that you want to build an extension to your house and you need £50,000 for this which you don’t have. You ask your Father to lend you the money, and although he would like to lend you £50,000 he simply does not have enough money so it is impossible in this case to borrow the money from your father. All hope is not lost because you can usually borrow money from a bank, by visiting the bank and asking if they are prepared to lend you £50,000. Grammatically the way you ask the bank for the loan is exactly the way that you asked your Father. In fact, this is also the same for a far more trivial situation, for example you realize in the pub that you have forgotten your wallet so you ask your friend if you can borrow £20. He says yes, sure he can lend you £20. We can sum it up like this; borrow and lend are used in connection with any amount of money which we ask for, (no matter how big or small) with the intention of returning that money at some point in the future. Summed up again below:

I borrowed £50,000 from the bank. (The bank lent me £50,000)
I borrowed £20 from my friend. (My friend lent me £20)

Libraries must be mentioned for we always borrow books from libraries and they always lend books to us. Although a library may seem like a business, there is no fee and even in the case that there is a fee, for example in the past when libraries mostly dealt with books you had to pay £1 to borrow a CD, you were still borrowing. From here, gradually we are moving again towards the commercial and let us start with the largest of objects, real estate, namely houses and flats. Rent [rent] is the all important multi-purpose word. As a verb you can rent a flat or house from someone and they can also rent a flat or house to you. Rent the noun refers to the amount of money that you pay each month; it is your rent, or the rent. Below are some example sentences:

I rent a flat from an agency. (An agency rents a flat to me)
The rent is £600 per month for this flat.

One small addition to mention is rent out, a phrasal verb describing the act of renting something to someone and importantly used only this way, ( e.g. you cannot rent something out from someone else), as in I rent my house out to someone else.

For smaller items and shorter periods of time both rent and hire [haɪə(r)] are commonly used. It is usual to rent or hire a car, van or evening dress, at least when adopting British English. American English tends to favour rent as there is another variation of hire (to be discussed later). Below are some example sentences:

When we arrive in Spain we must rent (or hire) a car.
We have so much stuff to move that we need to hire (or rent) a van.
My wife is going to rent (or hire) an evening dress as hers is old.

The one big difference between rent and hire which was alluded to above concerns people. In American English the word hire is used as a synonym for employ, both for a short term and long term position, so you could hire a rat catcher or similar tradesman to do a one off job at home just the same as you could hire a new member of staff for your company. Crucially, whereas inanimate objects can be rented or hired, people can only be hired, as in the following example sentences:

Let’s hire a builder to do the extension; it’s too big for us to do ourselves.
My PA is going on maternity leave so I need to hire a replacement for her.
Our company is hiring now. (here hiring is a synonym of recruiting)

Unfortunately where there is hiring, there is also firing, but that is another story. For today it is enough to remember and practise the uses and structures in this article. If you have trouble with vocabulary, use a dictionary to help you and if you don’t have a dictionary perhaps you can borrow one. You can ask a friend or colleague to lend you one.