Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To lay out; spend: synonym: spend.
- transitive verb To use up; consume.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To lay out; disburse; spend; pay out.
- To consume by use; spend in using: as, to
expend time, labor, or material; the oil of a lamp is expended in burning; water is expended in mechanical operations; the ammunition was entirely expended.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To lay out, apply, or employ in any way; to consume by use; to use up or distribute, either in payment or in donations; to spend
- intransitive verb To be laid out, used, or consumed.
- intransitive verb To pay out or disburse money.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To
consume orexhaust someresource . - verb transitive, rare To
spend ordisburse money .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb use up, consume fully
- verb pay out
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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If that Government have troops they are willing to "expend" in Mexico, it is not the British residents who will object to their presence.
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“We consume values in the lower gratifications of sense when we expend money for shows, for mere delicacies of the table, and for any thing which the only result is, the gratification of a physical appetite.”
A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010
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The Court dramatically changed federal, state, and local elections by holding that corporations and unions can expend unlimited sums of money in election campaigns.
The Conservative Assault on the Constitution Erwin Chemerinsky 2010
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If you have kids, or are contemplating having them, and don't have a small fortune to expend on private school, and would like to stay in New York City and take advantage of what is currently a pretty amazing school system, this issue is vastly important.
Donna Fish: Really -- Are We Really Solving the Budget Crisis by Cutting Yet More From Public Schools? Donna Fish 2011
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- Your rewards are proportional to the effort you expend.
Archive: Oct 08 - Mar 09 Cath@VWXYNot? 2009
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By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.
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We are beyond any desire to expend further time or effort trying to enlighten you, coax you, and persuade you.
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The Japanese expected that what they considered the inherently spoiled and weak Americans would never expend the blood and treasure to retake places of which they had never heard so that these places could then be returned to colonial masters of whom the Americans disapproved.
Between War and Peace Col. Matthew Moten 2011
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They might haul themselves out to break a few windows and commit random acts of vandalism but, if they actually got cranked up enough to commit violence, they would probably expend all their ammo on road signs and empty piss-beer cans on their way to the big event.
Think Progress » Democratic Offices Vandalized In Days Surrounding Health Care Vote 2010
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We are beyond any desire to expend further time or effort trying to enlighten you, coax you, and persuade you.
Think Progress » Paul Broun goes birther: ‘I don’t know’ if Obama is an American citizen. 2010
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