English
spend
Etymology

From Middle English spenden, from Old English spendan (attested especially in compounds āspendan ("to spend"), forspendan ("to use up, consume")), from Proto-West Germanic *spendōn, borrowed from Latin expendere.

Cognate with Old High German spentōn (whence German spenden), Middle Dutch - spenden ("to spend, dedicate"), Old Icelandic spenna.

Pronunciation Verb

spend (spends, present participle spending; simple past and past participle spent)

  1. (ambitransitive) To pay out (money).
    He spends far more on gambling than he does on living proper.
    • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC ↗:
      Then there came a reg'lar terror of a sou'wester same as you don't get one summer in a thousand, and blowed the shanty flat and ripped about half of the weir poles out of the sand. We spent consider'ble money getting 'em reset, and then a swordfish got into the pound and tore the nets all to slathers, right in the middle of the squiteague season.
  2. To bestow; to employ; often with on or upon.
    • [1633], George Herbert, edited by [Nicholas Ferrar], The Temple. Sacred Poems, and Private Ejaculations, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel; and are to be sold by Francis Green, […], →OCLC ↗:
      I […] am never loath / To spend my judgment.
  3. (dated) To squander.
    to spend an estate in gambling
  4. To exhaust, to wear out.
    The violence of the waves was spent.
    • 1603, Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, […], London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC ↗:
      their bodies spent with long labour and thirst
  5. To consume, to use up (time).
    My sister usually spends her free time in nightclubs.
    We spent the winter in the south of France.
    • 1661, John Fell, The Life of the most learned, reverend and pious Dr. H. Hammond‎:
      During the whole time of his abode in the university he generally spent thirteen hours of the day in study; by which assiduity besides an exact dispatch of the whole course of philosophy, he read over in a manner all classic authors that are extant […]
    • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC ↗:
      We tiptoed into the house, up the stairs and along the hall into the room where the Professor had been spending so much of his time.
    • 2012, Christoper Zara, Tortured Artists: From Picasso and Monroe to Warhol and Winehouse, the Twisted Secrets of the World's Most Creative Minds, part 1, chapter 1, 26 ↗:
      Clara's father, a trollish ne'er-do-well who spent most of his time in brothels and saloons, would disappear for days and weeks at a stretch, leaving Clara and her mother to fend for themselves.
  6. (dated, ambitransitive) To have an orgasm; to ejaculate sexually.
    The fish spends his semen on eggs which he finds floating and whose mother he has never seen.
  7. (intransitive) To waste or wear away; to be consumed.
    Energy spends in the using of it.
    • 1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC ↗:
      The sound spendeth and is dissipated in the open air.
  8. To be diffused; to spread.
    • 1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC ↗:
      The vines that they use for wine are so often cut, that their sap spendeth into the grapes.
  9. (mining) To break ground; to continue working.
Translations Translations Translations Noun

spend

  1. Amount of money spent (during a period); expenditure.
    I’m sorry, boss, but the advertising spend exceeded the budget again this month.
  2. (in the plural) Expenditures; money or pocket money.
  3. Discharged semen.
  4. Vaginal discharge.
Translations Translations Translations

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