/spɛnd/
OriginFrom Middle English spenden, from Old English spendan (attested especially in compounds āspendan (“to spend”), forspendan (“to use up, consume”)), from Proto-West Germanic *spendōn (“to spend”), borrowed from Latin expendere (“to weigh out”). Doublet of expend.
Cognate with Old High German spentōn (“to consume, use, spend”) (whence German spenden (“to donate, provide”)), Middle Dutch spenden (“to spend, dedicate”), Old Icelandic spenna (“to spend”).
- ambitransitiveTo pay out (money).
“He spends far more on gambling than he does on living proper.”
“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'b”
“In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, onl”
- To bestow; to employ; often with on or upon.
“I […] am never loath / To spend my judgment.”
- datedTo squander.
“to spend an estate in gambling”
- To exhaust, to wear out.
“The violence of the waves was spent.”
“their bodies spent with long labour and thirst”
- To consume, to use up (time).
“My sister usually spends her free time in nightclubs.”
“We spent the winter in the south of France.”
“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”
- ambitransitive, datedTo have an orgasm; to ejaculate sexually.
“The fish spends his semen on eggs which he finds floating and whose mother he has never seen.”
- intransitiveTo waste or wear away; to be consumed.
“Energy spends in the using of it.”
“The sound spendeth and is dissipated in the open air.”
- To be diffused; to spread.
“The vines that they use for wine are so often cut, that their sap spendeth into the grapes.”
- To break ground; to continue working.
- countable, uncountableAmount of money spent (during a period); expenditure.
“I’m sorry, boss, but the advertising spend exceeded the budget again this month.”
- countable, in-plural, uncountableExpenditures; money or pocket money.
“Total January spends by year”
“The spends have been made by our strategic partners […]”
- countable, uncountableDischarged semen.
- countable, uncountableVaginal discharge.
Formsspends(present, singular, third-person) · spending(participle, present) · spent(participle, past) · spent(past) · spends(plural)