Ana
Last year, one of my professors – that I am going to call Rosseforp* – apologized in class because they would not have a potluck party on the last day of class like one other professor was going to do. On the day of the party of this other professor, as the whole department had been invited, Rosseforp showed up. I approached them and said “You should ‘borrow’ this party”, and they promptly answered “It’s not ‘to borrow a party’, the correct expression is ‘to crash a party’”, and went away, leaving me with my mouth open, ready to answer that that was not what I meant. I was trying to suggest to Rosseforp that they should “use” the party as if it was their own (thanking people for coming, for example) because most students were in both classes anyway. Isn’t that what the word “borrow” means? We certainly use it more often with concrete objects, as in “borrow a pen”. But it can also be used figuratively, as in “borrow a word from another language” or “borrow an idea”. However, I guess, being a non-native speaker, any deviation from the standard or “acceptable” language (as usually decided by whomever is the self-proclaimed language expert available in the area) will be regarded as a mistake and there will be no attempts to recognize any possible intentional meaning behind the words chosen.
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