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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

spend.

To pay out (money).

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/spɛnd/Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/spɪnd/US, pin-pen-merger/spend/Australia, New-Zealand
  1. To pay out (money).

    ambitransitive
    I've already spent hundreds of dollars buying dog chow.
    He spends far more on gambling than he does on living proper.
  2. To bestow; to employ; often with on or upon.

  3. To squander.

    dated
    to spend an estate in gambling
  4. To exhaust, to wear out.

    The violence of the waves was spent.
  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.
  6. To have an orgasm; to ejaculate sexually.

    ambitransitive · dated
    The fish spends his semen on eggs which he finds floating and whose mother he has never seen.
  7. To waste or wear away; to be consumed.

    intransitive
    Energy spends in the using of it.
  8. To be diffused; to spread.

  9. To break ground; to continue working.

Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰ Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰs Proto-Italic *eks Latin ex Latin ex- Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend- Proto-Indo-European *(s)péndeti Proto-Italic *pendō Latin pendō Latin expendōbor. Proto-West Germanic *spendōn Old English spendan Middle English spenden English spend 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”).

noun/spɛnd/Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/spɪnd/US, pin-pen-merger/spend/Australia, New-Zealand
  1. Amount of money spent (during a period); expenditure.

    countable · uncountable
    I’m sorry, boss, but the advertising spend exceeded the budget again this month.
  2. Expenditures; money or pocket money.

    countable · in-plural · uncountable
  3. Discharged semen.

    countable · uncountable
  4. Vaginal discharge.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰ Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰs Proto-Italic *eks Latin ex Latin ex- Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend- Proto-Indo-European *(s)péndeti Proto-Italic *pendō Latin pendō Latin expendōbor. Proto-West Germanic *spendōn Old English spendan Middle English spenden English spend 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”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.