spend
/spɛnd/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.97 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "I've already spent hundreds of dollars buying dog chow."
- "He spends far more on gambling than he does on living proper."
- "Then there came a reg'lar terror of a sou'wester same as you don't get one summer in a thousand, and blowed the shanty flat and ripped about half of the weir poles out of the sand. We spent consider'ble money getting 'em reset, and then a swordfish got into the pound and tore the nets all to slathers, right in the middle of the squiteague season."
- "In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result."
- "I […] am never loath / To spend my judgment."
- "to spend an estate in gambling"
Etymology
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”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: spenden, spendan, *spendōn, expendere
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /spɛnd/
- British English: /spɛnd/