Meaning
Do not borrow money and do not lend it: a warning that mixing loans with relationships tends to destroy both the cash and the goodwill. Quoted as standalone, proverb-sounding advice, usually with a hint of irony, because anyone who knows the play remembers that the speaker is a self-important hypocrite. Its register is literary-quotational; it functions as an allusion more than a living idiom. Quotational and faintly ironic; often invoked to decline a loan politely or to moralise about money between friends. Regional use: General English (Shakespearean origin).
Origin
Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 3 (c. 1600). In his farewell advice to Laertes, who is leaving for France, Polonius instructs: 'Neither a borrower nor lender be, / For loan oft loses both itself and friend, / And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry' (Folger text; 'husbandry' means thrift or careful management). The maxim is conventionally credited to Shakespeare, though it distils much older folk wisdom about money and friendship. No Sweat Shakespeare stresses the dramatic irony: the precepts sound sage but sit in the mouth of a pompous meddler who immediately hires spies to watch Laertes in Paris. The line lives on because the speech belongs to the most memorised passages in English, quoted both sincerely and tongue-in-cheek.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- neither a borrower or lender be
- neither borrower nor lender be
Usage Examples
- My grandfather lived by 'neither a borrower nor a lender be', which is why he never once let a friend owe him money.
- She quoted 'neither a borrower nor a lender be' when I asked whether she would lend my cousin the deposit.
- The club's rule is neither borrower nor lender be: members donate freely, but nobody owes anybody anything.