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Glite Dictionary
🧑‍🔧 To summon help 📞 To phone a place 🏠 To visit briefly 🔙 To demand return
to call in

to call in

21 3.6
Ask for something back, for example a product or loan
  • phrasal verb
  • /kɔl ɪn/
: exigir la devolución
  • I've called in a specialist who wants to try another round of chemotherapy.
  • call in a loan
  • call in a debt
  • call in a favor

Examples

  • After several warnings, the company will call in the faulty product for inspection.

  • Now is the time to call in all favors.

    Academic text (2012)

  • The bank has called in the demand note.

    Indecent Proposal (1993)

  • The bank's gonna call in our loan, and then they'll take our restaurant stuff, and we will live in a box on the street.

    The Bob's Burgers Movie (2022)

  • I had a Delorme inReach device to call in a heli rescue if I needed it," he says.

    Blog text (7)

  • The bank decided to call in our loan because of late payments.

  • He had no choice but to call in the equipment that he had loaned out earlier.

Synonyms

to call back
vsto call in
60 3.3

Ask someone to return after they have left

is used to request return of items like products or loans rather than people
to recall
vsto call in
36 3.9

Ask people to return a faulty or dangerous product

is used more generally to request returns not only for dangerous defects
to call
vsto call in
  • Specialized
19 8.3

To require early repayment of a loan or bond

applies to return requests across items not only to early loan repayment

Antonyms

to keep
∞ 1.0

To continue doing something or stay in the same state

to refuse
∞ 1.7

To say no to a request or offer

How Forceful

demand
399 3.1
to call in
21 3.6
to reclaim
130 4.1

Surface Forms

call in infinitive
called in past
called in past participle
calling in present participle
calls in third person singular

Morphology

call + in

The sense 'to pay a short visit' is directly built from 'call' (a visit/make a visit) + 'in' (toward/inside), following a common English verb+particle compositional pattern. This relation is cross-linguistically common and predictable, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent meanings will very likely infer the MWE meaning.

Etymology

Call in may come from the image of a manager asking people to call in faulty goods to the factory for checks, like a product recall. That's why it means 'to request or demand the return of something'.