spend
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /spɛnd/
rhymes: -ɛnd
Forms: form: spends
form: spending
form: spent
form: spent
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 (“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”).
Senses: examples: text: He spends far more on gambling than he does on living proper.
text: 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.
ref: 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
text: 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, only 3% bought anything as a result.
ref: 2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8837, page 74:
glosses: To pay out (money).
examples: text: I […] am never loath / To spend my judgment.
ref: [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:
glosses: To bestow; to employ; often with on or upon.
examples: text: to spend an estate in gambling
glosses: To squander.
examples: text: The violence of the waves was spent.
text: their bodies spent with long labour and thirst
ref: 1603, Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, […], London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC:
glosses: To exhaust, to wear out.
examples: text: My sister usually spends her free time in nightclubs.
text: We spent the winter in the south of France.
text: 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[…]
ref: 1661, John Fell, The Life of the most learned, reverend and pious Dr. H. Hammond:
text: 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.
ref: 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
text: The last occasion on which the Kaiser [Wilhelm II] used this train was for an inglorious journey into Holland towards the end of the 1914 war. He spent the night in it at Eysden [Eijsden], while the Queen of the Netherlands and a hastily summoned Cabinet debated what to do with him.
ref: 1945 September and October, C. Hamilton Ellis, “Royal Trains—V”, in Railway Magazine, page 251:
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: Energy has seldom been found where we need it when we want it. Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame.
ref: 2013 July-August, Henry Petroski, “Geothermal Energy”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 4:
glosses: To consume, to use up (time).
examples: text: The fish spends his semen on eggs which he finds floating and whose mother he has never seen.
glosses: To have an orgasm; to ejaculate sexually.
examples: text: Energy spends in the using of it.
text: The sound spendeth and is dissipated in the open air.
ref: 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:
glosses: To waste or wear away; to be consumed.
examples: text: The vines that they use for wine are so often cut, that their sap spendeth into the grapes.
ref: 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:
glosses: To be diffused; to spread.
topics: business
mining
glosses: To break ground; to continue working.
Derived terms: bespend
don't spend it all at once
don't spend it all in one place
forespend
forspend
heartspent
misspend
outspend
overspend
respend
spaving
spendability
spendable
spendaholic
spend-all
spend a penny
spendathon
spendful
spend good money after bad
spendicitis
spending money
spendless
spend money like water
spendocracy
spendocrat
spendthrift
spend time
spendworthy
spendy
spent force
superspend
time spent laughing is time spent with the gods
tokens get spent
underspend
unspend