Definition of "borrow" []

• To obtain or receive (something) on loan with the promise or understanding of returning it or its equivalent. (verb-transitive)
• To adopt or use as one's own: I borrowed your good idea. (verb-transitive)
• In subtraction, to take a unit from the next larger denomination in the minuend so as to make a number larger than the number to be subtracted. (verb-transitive)
• Linguistics To adopt (a word) from one language to use in another. (verb-transitive)
• To obtain or receive something. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Meanwhile, the witnesses of the rural wedding had all skedaddled -- to borrow a Greek word -- into the woods, in dire confusion, tearing dresses, pulling down 'back hair,' hitching hoop skirts, and tumbling over blackberry vines -- but each intent on increasing the distance from the mad cow."
• "A gallery of idols with delicious flat chests, or to borrow a Japanese word, petanko."
• "Yes, we should all work together and the government should help where appropriate, but the government can only provide help with money we give them except when they borrow from the future."