Spent

How to spell spent

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce spent

What does spent mean?

1. verbPast tense of spend: paid out money, or used up time or effort.
2. adjectiveUsed up, exhausted, or having no energy or force left.

Spent in a sentence

• verb

  She spent the entire afternoon reviewing the contract.

• adjective

  By midnight the workers were completely spent and could barely stand.

• verb

  We spent far too much on the kitchen renovation.

• adjective

  The recycling bin was full of spent batteries.

Where does spent come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'spend', which comes from the Old English spendan, meaning 'to pay out' or 'expend'. That verb was itself an early borrowing into Germanic languages from the Latin expendere, meaning 'to weigh out' or 'to pay', built from ex 'out' and pendere 'to weigh, to hang'. The same pendere root sits behind a whole family of money and measuring words, including 'pension', 'expense', and even 'pendant', because coins were once literally weighed on a balance. The strong past form 'spent' developed by the regular pattern that also gives 'send' its past 'sent' and 'bend' its past 'bent'. Over time 'spent' also hardened into an adjective for anything used up or exhausted, a sense recorded from the 1500s onward.

How the word is built

• spend (Old English spendan: to pay out)
• past-tense vowel change (e from e)