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Friday, March 13, 2009

I heard this grammatical error a handful of times this past week (amazing what one picks up if you're listening for it), so perhaps it needs addressing: borrow versus lend/loan*. The common mistake is to ask someone to borrow you their movie/lawn mower/random item. The person getting the object does the borrowing, the one giving the object is lending or loaning it to the other person. To lend means to give to someone. To borrow is to receive something from someone. You lend someone your newspaper, you borrow their toothbrush (actually, I hope you don't borrow their toothbrush). Get it straight, people!


*Lend or loan are interchangeable, except for figurative expressions (like "lend me your ears").

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Darius' book montage

The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing
Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
Overcoming Sin and Temptation
According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible
Disciplines of a Godly Man
Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem
When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor. . .and Ourselves
The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Respectable Sins
The Kite Runner
Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak
Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak
A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/calvinist, ... anabaptist/anglican, metho
Show Them No Mercy
The Lord of the Rings
Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming
The Chronicles of Narnia
Les Misérables


Darius Teichroew's favorite books »