expend

Borrowed from Latin expendō (“I weigh; I pay out”). Doublet of spend.

• IPA^(key): /ɪkˈspɛnd/, /ɛkˈspɛnd/

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• Rhymes: -ɛnd

expend (third-person singular simple present expends, present participle expending, simple past and past participle expended)

1. (transitive) To consume, exhaust (some resource).
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:

     If my death might make this island happy […]
     I would expend it with all willingness.

   • 1904, Jack London, chapter 30, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC:

     So next day the hunting began. I did not know how to shoot, but I proceeded to learn. And when I had expended some thirty shells for three seals, I decided that the ammunition would be exhausted before I acquired the necessary knowledge. I had used eight shells for lighting fires before I hit upon the device of banking the embers with wet moss, and there remained not over a hundred shells in the box.

   • 1962 December, “Beyond the Channel: Switzerland: Federal Railways' progress”, in Modern Railways, page 416:

     To handle the unceasing traffic increase, immense sums of money are being expended in dealing with bottlenecks.

• expenditure
• expense
• expensive

• expent