Very simple feedback - I’ve put ‘debtor’ in for 借り手 like, a billion times now, and only by the grace of Flaming Durtles’ undo function has it been accepted.
Jisho provides ‘debtor’ as a valid definition, and I hear that word used more in English than ‘borrower’, so I feel like it should be allowed. Unless I’m missing some valuable nuance? It’s entirely possible.
(I know user synonyms exist, but this particular example has confounded me for a while!)
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It could be used that way, but there’s such a wide range of difference in nuance between someone borrowing something and someone going into debt, that I dunno if I’d really want to conflate the two. Like, sure. The person could be borrowing a ton of money and become a debtor that way, but that’s not the first thing I’d think of when someone is just borrowing something without further information.
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To be fair, it might be a difference in interpretation - I’d consider someone a debtor who owes anything at all, technically. I’d probably call someone who borrows a pen a ‘debtor’ before I’d call them a ‘borrower’. Although I’d call someone lending money a ‘lender’ before calling them a ‘creditor’, too, so I get the point.
I’m not entirely sure if WK has a policy on what constitutes ‘common enough’ to be a definition. If it’s expected that users just use the synonym function when this kind of debatable thing pops up that makes sense.
You can always add it yourself as a synonym, it’s not on the block list.
If you look at the explanation wanikani wrote it says
This word is often used to specifically refer to borrowers in contrast to lenders.
And when you check 借りてin a JP-JP 辞書 you’ll see borrower and tenant are the most common use of it. There is a mention of debtor, but it seems this is not the main use of the word.
There’s a significant nuance here between borrower and debtor, since the borrowing is the action itself, tenant is obliged contractually to pay but that does not define them as a debtor just the side that rents while debtor is a result of not paying or returning what you own to someone.
In general when it comes to kanji/vocabs with several meanings, from my experience choosing the easier meaning that is less of a hustle to type or that is easier to remember but is the less common use of that item, backfires.
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The green goddess also uses borrower as the primary meaning, and suggests words like tenant,
renter and lessee in the context of a home or land. Rent is technically debt, but these feel like more nature descriptors.
a borrower; 〔金の〕 a debtor; 〔家屋・土地の〕 a tenant; a renter; a lessee.
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Thank you very much, that makes a lot of sense! Now you’ve laid it all out, I feel a bit foolish 
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Hey it‘s all good and it‘s important to ask those question and suggest words to the allow list, or the meaning on the kanji/vocab page. A lot of updates you‘ve seen over the past few months were a result of users feedback, just like you.
Who knows, they might decide to add debtor to the visible meaning list.
Midori, eh?
Hmmm 
it really depends on the contract you can still be a borrower of an apartment and not be in debt it just means you are using it temporarily for a fee, hence a tenant. There‘s probably some social status undercurrent here, a bit feudalistic if you ask me, that makes tenant and debtor interchangeable. But that‘s too deep for my Japanese level.
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I’d say in finance rent isn’t debt. It’s a cost for using something which you don’t claim ownership of.
Compare with mortgage: you own some real estate but you bought it with someone else’s money, which you need to pay back, that’s debt. Interest on the debt amount would be comparable to rent: a fee to use some else’s money.
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Great points! Also worth keeping in mind that usage differs between cultures, especially on opposite sides of a certain large body of salt water.
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