spend
Americanverb (used with object)
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spends,
present (3rd person singular)
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spent,
past participle, past
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spending
present participle
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to pay out, disburse, or expend; dispose of (money, wealth, resources, etc.).
resisting the temptation to spend one's money.
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to employ (labor, thought, words, time, etc.), as on some object or in some proceeding.
Don't spend much time on it.
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to pass (time) in a particular manner, place, etc..
We spent a few days in Baltimore.
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to use up, consume, or exhaust.
The storm had spent its fury.
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to give (one's blood, life, etc.) for some cause.
verb (used without object)
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spends,
present (3rd person singular)
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spent,
past participle, past
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spending
present participle
-
to spend money, energy, time, etc.
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Obsolete. to be consumed or exhausted.
verb
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to pay out (money, wealth, etc)
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(tr) to concentrate (time, effort, thought, etc) upon an object, activity, etc
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(tr) to pass (time) in a specific way, activity, place, etc
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(tr) to use up completely
the hurricane spent its force
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(tr) to give up (one's blood, life, etc) in a cause
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obsolete (intr) to be used up or exhausted
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informal to urinate
noun
Synonym Usage
Spend, disburse, expend, squander refer to paying out money. Spend is the general word: We spend more for living expenses now. Disburse implies expending from a specific source or sum to meet specific obligations, or paying in definite allotments: The treasurer has authority to disburse funds. Expend is more formal, and implies spending for some definite and (usually) sensible or worthy object: to expend most of one's salary on necessities. Squander suggests lavish, wasteful, or foolish expenditure: to squander a legacy.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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spendsimple
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spendssimple
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have spentperfect
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has spentperfect
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am spendingprogressive
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are spendingprogressive
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is spendingprogressive
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have been spendingperfect progressive
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has been spendingperfect progressive
Past
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spentsimple
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had spentperfect
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was spendingprogressive
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were spendingprogressive
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had been spendingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of spend
First recorded in 1125–75; Middle English spenden, continuing Old English -spendan (in āspendan, forspendan “to spend entirely or utterly”), from West Germanic, from Latin expendere “to pay out, spend, expend” ( see expend); compare German spenden
Explanation
When you use money or time, you spend it. If you spend a lot of time at the mall, you'll probably also spend money there. The verb spend is good for talking about passing time on a particular activity or living in one place for a length of time: "He went on to spend years in India." When you spend money, you pay it in return for something, like when you spend five dollars on a bottle of water at the airport or spend your savings on a trip around the world. The Latin root expendere means "to weigh out money."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Then your opponent has to spend a lot of money defending himself.
From Slate ● Oct. 6, 2026
But here’s a sobering estimate: to justify all the cash being invested in AI, American businesses and consumers would have to spend about as much on AI in 2032 as they do on food.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
The uncertainty created by the war can also prompt households to save more and spend less.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
The Angels frustrated Fontaine at times by declining to spend big on players from talent-rich Latin America.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 5, 2026
Maybe he should spend the winter staying put in the Very, Very Far North.
From "The Very, Very Far North" by Dan Bar-el
Formerly the proud owner of three Great Danes, Herman now spends about two hours a day at the dog park to tire out his rescued Jack Russell mix, Willy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026
Iñárritu spends the film’s first quarter setting the scene and characters — strangely quite literally, raising what looks like a stage curtain but is revealed to be a window shade.
From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026
These days, he spends more time looking back at those memories than performing the trick.
From BBC ● Oct. 2, 2026
As the New York Yankees’ scouting director, Oppenheimer usually spends the bulk of his time in baseball hotbeds in the Sunbelt, and with good reason.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026
She always drinks way too much Sprite when we come here and then spends 10 percent of the time peeing.
From "From Twinkle, with Love" by Sandhya Menon
Almost £200m has now been spent on the project, despite work having yet to start on the road.
From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2026
Aurich has spent his entire football life wrenching last-second victories from the jaws of defeat.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
Physicists have spent years searching for evidence of these wakes at the Large Hadron Collider and other high-energy particle accelerators.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 6, 2026
The district paid $957.1 million in 2023-24 to make up the difference, but spent 56% more — $1.49 billion — in 2025-26, an increase of more than $500 million over two years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026
There is nobody who has spent as much time as I have wishing for that not to have been Luc’s ending.
From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse
The study from Washington-based consulting firm EY Quantitative Economics and Statistics also found that the U.S. share of major-studio spending on film productions similarly fell from 74% to 42% between 1999 and 2024.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026
There were problems with spending on suspicious health supplements.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026
Like Piker, he’s been spending a lot of time talking to younger voters, getting them to debate him.
From Slate ● Oct. 6, 2026
It is also spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost its infrastructure, including adding parking spots, to prepare for the influx of passengers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
She seemed pleased to be spending the evening with me and me alone.
From "South of Somewhere" by Kalena Miller
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
