Meaning & use
cosigner
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Meaning
nouncountable
A person who signs a loan or lease along with another person and promises to pay if that person cannot.
Grammar: Usually followed by on a document or for a person: a cosigner on the loan, a cosigner for her son.
Patterns
- a cosigner on something
- a cosigner for someone
- act as a cosigner
The bank asked her father to be a cosigner on the car loan.
Without a cosigner, the student could not rent the apartment.
A cosigner is responsible for the debt if the borrower misses payments.
Word forms
| plural | cosigners |
|---|
Common combinations
- need a cosigner
- Young adults often need a cosigner for their first loan.
- find a cosigner
- She found a cosigner willing to back her apartment lease.
- ask someone to be a cosigner
- He asked his uncle to be a cosigner on the mortgage.
- cosigner on a loan
- My aunt is the cosigner on a loan I took for school.
- release a cosigner
- After two years of payments, the bank agreed to release the cosigner.
Synonyms and how they differ
- guarantor
- Guarantor is the more formal and the usual British word, and it can cover any promise to pay, not only loans signed together.
- co-borrower
- A co-borrower shares the loan and its benefits, whereas a cosigner usually only guarantees it.
- backer
- Backer is general and informal, and may support a project without any legal duty to pay.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: cosigner or signatory?
cosigner vs signatory
A signatory simply signs a document, while a cosigner signs in order to take on responsibility for someone else's debt.
Practice
The landlord would not rent the apartment to the student unless a parent agreed to be a ___.
Choose one answer.
A cosigner promises to pay if the tenant cannot. A co-worker, consumer or customer takes on no such legal duty.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “cosigner”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.