Gramer Girl here, I'm in Yon Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff. Today, we'll

use two fun examples from fiction to talk about the difference between the words borrow

and lend, and then we'll talk about all the complexities of using neither and nor.

These people run a foul of standard grammar if they use the word borrow when they should

have used lend, or say lend when they should have said borrow. The confusion is understandable

since borrowing and lending are both actions related to one transaction. And in some dialects,

people do say things such as, can you borrow me some money or can I lend your pen? But

in standard English, those two actions are different, and the words borrow and lend

aren't interchangeable because they involve different actions and mean different things.

Let's look at two examples from literature. British author Mary Norton wrote a series

of children's fantasy books about tiny people who were called borrowers. In fact, the first

book in her series was simply titled The Barrowers. Pod and homily clock and their daughter

Eridie are the main characters in the book series. In the first book, they start out living

in the space under the floorboards of a house where giant people live, whom Eridie calls

human beans. The clocks have friends and relatives with different last names, such as the

harpsichords, rain barrels, overmantles, book racks, and bell poles. But all of them are

called borrowers because everything they use to furnish their tiny homes in secret places

is borrowed from the people who live in the house. A spool of thread serves as a table,

a postage stamp, a drawing wall like a picture, and match boxes stacked on top of each other

make for a chest of drawers for the borrowers. Sometimes when the human beans can't find

something, they blame it on the borrowers. In that book series, the borrowers don't outright

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