spend
/spɛnd
/verb (past and past participle spent /spɛnt/) [with object]
1Give (money) to pay for goods, services, or so as to benefit someone or something: the firm has spent £100,000 on hardware...
- We spent too much money on people that hate us and loathe us and want us out of their country.
- By now there should be nobody who doesn't agree that how much money we spend per pupil makes a difference.
Synonyms
pay out, lay out, expend, disburse;
squander, go through, run through, waste, fritter away;
lavish
informal fork out, shell out, dish out, cough up, blow, splash out, splurge, lash out
British informal stump up, blue
Australian/New Zealand informal knock down
archaic spring
North American informal pony up
1.1Use or give out the whole of; exhaust: she couldn’t buy any more because she had already spent her money the initial surge of interest had spent itself...
- She put her hands on her hips and watched as the can spent itself.
- The lightning spent itself and the coach fell to the ground unconscious.
- The last drops of the rainfall spattered heavily against the cobblestones as the storm spent itself and shook itself off.
Synonyms
use up, consume, exhaust, deplete, drain
2Pass (time) in a specified way or in a particular place: she spent a lot of time travelling...
- She spent a sleepless night passing along the police line searching out scraps of news.
- A driver without a resident's pass wanting to spend three hours in Piccadilly car park must find £6 in coins.
- Last week the town council passed a motion to spend a day picking up litter around the town.
Synonyms
pass, occupy, fill, take up, while away, use up
put in, devote, employ;
waste
noun informal
An amount of money paid out: the average spend at the cafe is £10 a head...
- This still amounts to an aggregate spend of several millions.
- The average spend per child is continuing to rise year-on-year.
- Microsoft group marketing manager Nick McGrath likens the spend to the amount used in launching a new car.
Phrases
spend a penny
Derivatives
spendable
- This means food vouchers spendable only at certain supermarkets, and dispersal to one ‘no choice’ offer of accommodation, often away from existing communities, lawyers and even families.
- ‘It's still spendable, so it's not exactly scrap,’ Astor pointed out.
- But having no spendable currency hampered their happiness.
spender
/ noun ...- The biggest spenders in monetary terms are Britain at €41 bn, France at €34 bn and Germany at €24 bn.
- By far the biggest spenders are the Norwegians and the Finns, who spent almost €50 and €38 per person on haircare products in 2002.
- The highest spenders are people aged between 45 and 64, this group spending on average €314 each on the net before Christmas.
Origin
Old English spendan, from Latin expendere 'pay out'; partly also a shortening of obsolete dispend, from Latin dispendere 'pay out'.
expense from Late Middle English:
Expense goes back to Latin expendere ‘pay out’, and shares a root with Old English spend.