Library / English Dictionary

EXPEND

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Use up, consume fully

Example:

The legislature expended its time on school questions

Synonyms:

expend; use

Classified under:

Verbs of eating and drinking

"Expend" entails doing...:

consume; deplete; eat; eat up; exhaust; run through; use up; wipe out (use up (resources or materials))

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "expend"):

abuse; misuse; pervert (change the inherent purpose or function of something)

abuse (use wrongly or improperly or excessively)

spare (use frugally or carefully)

occupy; take; use up (require (time or space))

blow; squander; waste (spend thoughtlessly; throw away)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Sentence example:

They expend the money

Derivation:

expenditure (the act of consuming something)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Pay out

Example:

spend money

Synonyms:

drop; expend; spend

Classified under:

Verbs of buying, selling, owning

Hypernyms (to "expend" is one way to...):

pay (give money, usually in exchange for goods or services)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "expend"):

misspend (spend time badly or unwisely)

piddle; piddle away; trifle; wanton; wanton away (waste time; spend one's time idly or inefficiently)

lay out (spend or invest)

economise; economize; save (spend sparingly, avoid the waste of)

commit; invest; place; put (make an investment)

nickel-and-dime; penny-pinch (spend money frugally; spend as little as possible)

misspend (spend (money or other resources) unwisely)

underspend (spend at less than the normal rate)

trifle away; wanton; wanton away (spend wastefully)

blow (spend lavishly or wastefully on)

afford (be able to spare or give up)

consume; squander; ware; waste (spend extravagantly)

consume; deplete; eat; eat up; exhaust; run through; use up; wipe out (use up (resources or materials))

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s something on somebody

Derivation:

expender (someone who spends money to purchase goods or services)

expending; expenditure (the act of spending money for goods or services)

expenditure (money paid out; an amount spent)

expensive (high in price or charging high prices)

Credits

 Context examples: 

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.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

One erg is the work done or energy expended by a force of one dyne acting through a distance of one centimeter.

(Erg, NCI Thesaurus)

It was evident that Berks meant to finish the battle off-hand, whilst Jim, with two of the most experienced men in England to advise him, was quite aware that his correct tactics were to allow the ruffian to expend his strength and wind in vain.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A coded value specifying the unique identifier for the type of award an agency makes to support a program and within which it incorporates the terms and conditions for expending the funds and performing the work.

(Funding Mechanism Code, NCI Thesaurus)

The Spanish slinger, seeing the youth lie slain, and judging from his dress that he was no common man, rushed forward to plunder him, knowing well that the bowmen above him had expended their last shaft.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Are you certain that you can afford to part with so much money, and that it is right that it should be so expended?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Always, as soon as he received his liberty, he fled away, and always he fled north. He was possessed of an obsession that drove him north. The homing instinct, Irvine called it, after he had expended the selling price of a sonnet in getting the animal back from northern Oregon.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Astonishingly, three-toed sloths, which are more specialized to their environment, expend as little as 460 kilojoules of energy a day, the equivalent of burning a mere 110 calories — roughly the same number of calories in a baked potato.

(Putting the sloth in sloths: Arboreal lifestyle drives slow pace, NSF)

He's good for a hundred a-year, but of course that must be expended on himself.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

That there were now occasional sounds of feet and voices overhead which he inferred the cotton did not exclude, from the circumstance of his evidently being clutched by the lady as a victim on whom to expend her superabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)