loan vs principal

loan

noun
  • A sum of money or other property that a natural or legal person borrows from another with the condition that it be returned or repaid over time or at a later date (sometimes with interest). 

  • An act or instance of lending, an act or instance of granting something for temporary use. 

  • A lonnen. 

  • The permission to borrow any item. 

  • The contract and array of legal or ethical obligations surrounding a loan. 

verb
  • To lend (something) to (someone). 

principal

noun
  • The money originally invested or loaned, on which basis interest and returns are calculated. 

  • The chief administrator of a school. 

  • A diapason, a type of organ stop on a pipe organ. 

  • The construction that gives shape and strength to a roof, generally a truss of timber or iron; or, loosely, the most important member of a piece of framing. 

  • A dancer at the highest rank within a professional dance company, particularly a ballet company. 

  • The primary participant in a crime. 

  • The first two long feathers of a hawk's wing. 

  • A security principal. 

  • A legal person that authorizes another (the agent) to act on their behalf; or on whose behalf an agent or gestor in a negotiorum gestio acts. 

  • The chief executive and chief academic officer of a university or college. 

  • A partner or owner of a business. 

  • One of the turrets or pinnacles of waxwork and tapers with which the posts and centre of a funeral hearse were formerly crowned 

adj
  • Chosen or assumed among a branch of possible values of a multi-valued function so that the function is single-valued. 

  • Primary; most important; first level in importance. 

How often have the words loan and principal occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )