The paper addresses problematic issues within linguistic borrowing terminology, which is often used inconsistently in language contact studies, and though abundant, it appears insufficient, as the latest research shows. The challenges a present-day language contact researcher faces are related to terminological imprecision, ambiguity, and the overlapping and overlaying of loan terms exploited in the description of language contact outcomes. Terminological discrepancies are multifactorial and have been caused, among others, by multilingualism of research, lack of terminological equivalence both within monolingual and multilingual settings, and the multiplicity of conceptual frameworks and research methods. Yet, despite loan terminology richness, some of the newly-appearing loan developments, induced by intensive language contact and speakers’ creativity, cannot be squeezed into the available typologies. An illustration of the abundance, conflict and insufficiency in loan terminology is based on European, American and Asian studies on linguistic borrowing published over the last century.