Spend

//spɛnd// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 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. 2
    Expenditures; money or pocket money. countable, in-plural, uncountable

    "Total January spends by year"

  3. 3
    Discharged semen. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    Vaginal discharge. countable, uncountable
Verb
  1. 1
    To pay out (money). ambitransitive

    "He spends far more on gambling than he does on living proper."

  2. 2
    pay out wordnet
  3. 3
    To bestow; to employ; often with on or upon.

    "I […] am never loath / To spend my judgment."

  4. 4
    spend completely wordnet
  5. 5
    To squander. dated

    "to spend an estate in gambling"

Show 7 more definitions
  1. 6
    use up a period of time in a specific way wordnet
  2. 7
    To exhaust, to wear out.

    "The violence of the waves was spent."

  3. 8
    To consume, to use up (time).

    "My sister usually spends her free time in nightclubs."

  4. 9
    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."

  5. 10
    To waste or wear away; to be consumed. intransitive

    "Energy spends in the using of it."

  6. 11
    To be diffused; to spread.

    "The vines that they use for wine are so often cut, that their sap spendeth into the grapes."

  7. 12
    To break ground; to continue working.

Synonyms

All synonyms
ablateabsorballotante upassignassimilate

Example

More examples

"I don't want to spend the rest of my life regretting it."

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”).

Related phrases

don't spend it all at oncedon't spend it all in one placespend a pennyspend good money after badspend money like waterspend timespend-allspending moneyspent forcetime spent laughing is time spent with the godstokens get spentbreak ground

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