Expense

//ɪkˈspɛns// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A spending or consuming, often a disbursement of funds. countable, uncountable

    "She went to great expense to ensure her children would get the best education."

  2. 2
    a detriment or sacrifice wordnet
  3. 3
    The elimination or consumption of something, sometimes with the notion of loss or damage to the thing eliminated. countable, uncountable

    "Jones reached the final at the expense of Smith, who couldn't beat him."

  4. 4
    amounts paid for goods and services that may be currently tax deductible (as opposed to capital expenditures) wordnet
  5. 5
    Loss. countable, obsolete, uncountable

    "And moan the expense of many a vanished sight."

Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    money spent to perform work and usually reimbursed by an employer wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To charge a cost against an expense account; to bill something to the company for which one works. transitive

    "It should be acceptable to expense a business lunch with a client."

  2. 2
    reduce the estimated value of something wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
costdisbursementamountbereavementbudgetbudget items

Example

More examples

"I paid the bill out of my expense account."

Etymology

From Middle English expense, from Anglo-Norman expense and Old French espense, from Late Latin expēnsa, from Latin expendō. See expend. Doublet of speso.

Related phrases

all-expenseat the expense ofcapital expenseexpense accountincidental expenseoperating expensespare no expenseaccounting termbusiness costex spendfinancial outlayhigh cost

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.