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expense

ik-SPENS/ɪkˈspɛns/

Pluralexpenses

Verbexpenses, expensing, expensed

4 meanings of expense

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  1. 1
    nouncountable or uncountable
    The spending or consuming of resources, especially the paying out of money.

    The expense of running a national campaign quickly drained the party's reserves.

    Homeowners often underestimate the expense involved in restoring an old property.

    Similarcost, expenditure, spending, outlay, price

    Oppositeincome, revenue

    Note

    The core of the word came from Latin expendō through Old French and Anglo-Norman. That makes it a close relative of expend and a doublet of speso. It works as a count noun (a big expense) and as a mass noun (at great expense). In at the expense of our company, the phrase names who pays. the sacrificial sense uses the same words to name who loses.

  2. 2
    nouncountable or uncountable
    The elimination or consumption of something, sometimes carrying the sense of loss or damage to the thing used up.

    The new factory boosted output at the expense of the surrounding wetlands.

    He climbed the corporate ladder at the expense of every friendship he once valued.

    Similarcost, detriment, sacrifice

    Oppositebenefit

    Note

    Here the word usually sits inside one frame, at the expense of, which pairs a gain with what it costs. The verb before it names the gain: reached the final, boosted output, climbed the ladder. The noun after of names what is used up or the rival who loses, such as Smith, the wetlands or old friendships. The phrase is a ready way to say that one thing was bought with another.

  3. 3
    verbtransitive
    To charge a cost against an expense account, billing it to the company one works for.

    New hires often forget they can expense their commuting costs.

    She expensed the entire conference trip, including meals and flights.

    Similarclaim, charge, bill

    Note

    This verb is made from the noun, and it takes the cost itself as its object: expense a business lunch, expense the flights. Its forms are regular: expenses, expensing, expensed. Keep it apart from expend, the older verb behind the whole word. You expend effort or money by using it up, but you expense a cost by billing it to your employer.

Less common meaning

  1. 4
    nounobsoleteuncountable
    The suffering or incurring of loss.
    And moan the expense of many a vanished sight.
    c. 1609, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 30
    Note

    English has dropped this sense, but it matters for reading Shakespeare. In Sonnet 30, "And moan the expense of many a vanished sight," the speaker mourns things lost, not money paid out. A modern reader tends to hear the money meaning first, so it is worth pausing over the line. In new writing this use reads as deliberate archaism, and plain loss says the same thing without the echo.

Practice

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Origin

This word came into Middle English from Anglo-Norman expense and Old French espense, from Late Latin expēnsa, which goes back to Latin expendō ("to pay out"). It is a doublet of speso.