Etimology
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”).
verb
spend (third-person singular simple present spends, present participle spending, simple past and past participle spent)
(transitive, intransitive) To pay out (money).
To bestow; to employ; often with on or upon.
(dated) To squander.
To exhaust, to wear out.
To consume, to use up (time).
(dated, transitive, intransitive) To have an orgasm; to ejaculate sexually.
(intransitive) To waste or wear away; to be consumed.
To be diffused; to spread.
(mining) To break ground; to continue working.
Examples
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
The violence of the waves was spent.
their bodies spent with long labour and thirst
My sister usually spends her free time in nightclubs.
We spent the winter in the south of France.
During the whole time of his abode in the university he generally spent thirteen hours of the day in study; by which assiduity besides an exact dispatch of the whole course of philosophy, he read over in a manner all classic authors that are extant […]
We tiptoed into the house, up the stairs and along the hall into the room where the Professor had been spending so much of his time.
The last occasion on which the Kaiser [Wilhelm II] used this train was for an inglorious journey into Holland towards the end of the 1914 war. He spent the night in it at Eysden [Eijsden], while the Queen of the Netherlands and a hastily summoned Cabinet debated what to do with him.
Clara's father, a trollish ne'er-do-well who spent most of his time in brothels and saloons, would disappear for days and weeks at a stretch, leaving Clara and her mother to fend for themselves.
Energy has seldom been found where we need it when we want it. Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame.
The fish spends his semen on eggs which he finds floating and whose mother he has never seen.
Energy spends in the using of it.
The sound spendeth and is dissipated in the open air.
The vines that they use for wine are so often cut, that their sap spendeth into the grapes.
noun
spend (countable and uncountable, plural spends)
Amount of money spent (during a period); expenditure.
(in the plural) Expenditures; money or pocket money.
Discharged semen.
Vaginal discharge.
Examples
I’m sorry, boss, but the advertising spend exceeded the budget again this month.
Total January spends by year
The spends have been made by our strategic partners […]