Expense

How to spell expense

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce expense

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does expense mean?

1. nounThe cost or money spent on something.
2. verbTo charge a cost to an employer or business account.

Expense in a sentence

• noun

  The cost of the new roof was a major expense for the family.

• verb

  Staff can expense the cost of any client lunch under fifty pounds.

• noun

  Travel is the largest expense in the department budget.

• verb

  Remember to expense the hotel bill rather than pay it yourself.

Where does expense come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin expensa, meaning 'money paid out', a form of the verb expendere 'to weigh out' or 'to pay'. That verb joins ex- 'out' with pendere 'to weigh, to hang', because in the ancient world payment was literally a matter of weighing out metal on a balance. English took the word in the 1300s through Old French, where it appeared as espense, and the early sense was simply the act of spending or the cost incurred. The same pendere root weighs down a whole family of English words, including 'pension', 'pendant', 'expend' and 'expensive', all carrying the idea of paying out or hanging in balance. The spelling trap is the ending: it is -se, not -ce, even though it sounds soft, and the middle keeps the same 'pens' you see in 'expensive'.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• pens (from pendere: to weigh, to pay out)
• -e