expense

UK/ɪkˈspɛns/US/ɪkˈspɛns/

nounB22 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #2,939 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: expenses

An expense is money going out, one of the things you have to pay for. Rent, the train ticket, the boiler that broke in February.

In the singular it is the money itself: at great expense, spare no expense, a holiday not worth the expense. The plural is a different animal. Expenses is money you spend doing your job that your employer pays back, so people put in an expenses claim and talk about a trip being on expenses. The phrase to watch is at the expense of, which means something else was damaged to buy it: he built the business at the expense of his health. And a joke at your expense is a joke with you as the target.

Definitions of expense

1nounexpenseMoney that you have to spend on something; a cost.B2~96%
“Heating is our biggest expense in winter.”
synonyms: cost, outlay
2nounjobThe money you spend while doing your job, which your employer pays back.B2~4%
“He filed his expenses at the end of the month.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 27 sentences found in the wild and placed 27 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

expense is a cost.

Also accepted in games: cost, expenses

Phrases it lives in

at the expense of — with harm or loss to something else
at someone's expense — with that person as the victim, especially of a joke
spare no expense — spend whatever it takes

Where it comes from

Expense came through Middle English and Anglo-Norman from Latin expensa, the noun formed on expendo, the same Latin verb that gives English expend. Behind that stands a Proto-Indo-European root, (s)pend-, about paying out. Money leaving your hands has been the whole idea from the start.

Proto-Indo-European
*(s)pend-
Latin
expēnsa
Old French
espense
Anglo-Norman
expense
Middle English
expense
English, today
expense

From Middle English expense, from Anglo-Norman expense and Old French espense, from Latin expēnsa, from Latin expendō. See expend. a doublet of speso.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Shopping & Money, A Man Called Ove, Business & Money

First appears in chapter 11 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

expense in the wild

For students or parents, tuition is an expense.
Expense
An expense is a cost that is "paid" or "remitted", usually in exchange for something of value.
Expense
The benefits may include other expenses, such as funeral expenses.
Life insurance
An operating expense (OpEx) is an ongoing cost for running a product, business, or system.
Operating expense
For larger systems like businesses, opex may also include the cost of workers and facility expenses such as rent and utilities.
Operating expense

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of expense

1nounexpenseMoney that you have to spend on something; a cost.B2~96%

“Heating is our biggest expense in winter.”

synonyms: cost, outlay

2nounjobThe money you spend while doing your job, which your employer pays back.B2~4%

“He filed his expenses at the end of the month.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 27 sentences found in the wild and placed 27 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

expense is a cost.

Also accepted in games: cost, expenses