🌐
BYJUS
byjus.com › english › difference-between-spend-and-spent
Table Summarising the Difference between Spend and Spent
November 8, 2022 - There are two points of difference between the words ‘spend’ and ‘spent’. Firstly the word ‘spend’ is used as a verb which means to pay out money or use up time to do something, for example, ‘Please spend some time reading books.’ Here, ‘spend’ is used to mean to use or devote time for reading books.
🌐
Longman
ldoceonline.com › dictionary › spend
spend | meaning of spend in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English | LDOCE
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishspendspend1 /spend/ ●●● S1 W1 verb (past tense and past participle spent /spent/) 1 money [intransitive, transitive]SPEND MONEY to use your money to pay for goods or services I can’t afford to spend any more money this week.spend £5/$10 ...
Discussions

What is the difference between spend and spent ?
Synonym for spend "Spent" is the past tense as well as the past participle form of "spend". On average I spend $100 a day. Yesterday I spent $100. So far today I've spent $50.|"Spent" can also mean "tired"/"exhausted". A: Wanna grab a beer together after work today? More on hinative.com
🌐 hinative.com
2
January 18, 2020
Is it really OK to use "spend" as a noun? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
People I ask have never heard it ... mistake, or a fad. What's wrong with "spending"? ... I would consider it "informal" at best. "Spending" is the much better choice in most cases. ... Perhaps some find the term expenditure too "formal" and excessive. But expenses is perfectly suitable, better than spend, and strikes the right balance between business and private. ... The first citation in the full OED entry for spend The action of spending money; the amount spent is dated ... More on english.stackexchange.com
🌐 english.stackexchange.com
July 10, 2016
spend or spent hours? I have a grammar question: spend hours to write? spent hours to written?
spend or spent hours? I have a grammar question: spend hours to write? spent hours to written? More on italki.com
🌐 italki.com
7
0
June 5, 2017
Will the blood points I spend on the ptr be spent in the main game or am I good to dump blood points into the new killer to test them
Nothing will be saved from the ptb. Your good to go2 More on reddit.com
🌐 r/deadbydaylight
4
0
April 16, 2018
🌐
Cambridge Dictionary
dictionary.cambridge.org › us › dictionary › english › spent
SPENT | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary
1 week ago - spend · subsidize · treat See ... browser doesn't support HTML5 audio · /spent/ Something that is spent has been used so that it no longer has any power or effectiveness: spent bullets/matches ·...
🌐
PREP Education
prepedu.com › en › blog › ielts
The past tense of Spend and its usage in English
February 25, 2025 - When you need to express the action of spending in the past, the correct form to use is spent. This is true whether you're discussing time, money, or energy. The verb spend belongs to a category of words that don't follow the standard pattern ...
Call   +84931428899
Address   114 LAVENDER STREET, #11-83 CT HUB 2, 338729, SINGAPORE
🌐
Quora
quora.com › Which-one-is-correct-I-have-spend-money-or-I-have-spent-money
Which one is correct 'I have spend money' or 'I have spent money'? - Quora
Answer (1 of 5): “I have spent money" is the right sentence to say. To support this.. Verbs are of three forms. V1, V2, V3 Spend- V1 form of verb. Spent - V2 & V3 forms of verb. After have has and had no verb will be used as V1 rather it should be used as V3 form. Here the helping verb ‘have'...
🌐
Collins Dictionary
collinsdictionary.com › dictionary › english › spent
SPENT definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
Spent is the past tense and past participle of spend. ... Spent substances or containers have been used and cannot be used again.
Published   6 days ago
🌐
Learn English
learnenglish.de › vocabulary › tenses › spendtense.html
Irregular Verb - To spend / spent / spending - Learn English Tenses
Present Simple - "He spends money on beer every week." Present Perfect Simple - "He has already spent £36 on beer since the end of April."
🌐
Merriam-Webster
merriam-webster.com › dictionary › spend
SPEND Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
1 week ago - The meaning of SPEND is to use up or pay out : expend. How to use spend in a sentence.
Find elsewhere
🌐
Collins Dictionary
collinsdictionary.com › conjugation › english › spend
SPEND conjugation table | Collins English Verbs
I will have spent you will have spent he/she/it will have spent we will have spent you will have spent they will have spent · I will have been spending you will have been spending he/she/it will have been spending we will have been spending you will have been spending they will have been spending · New from Collins · Quick word challenge · Quiz Review · Question: 1 - Score: 0 / 5 · main or mane?
🌐
Dictionary.com
dictionary.com › browse › spend
SPEND Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
1 week ago - Spend is the general word: We spend more for living expenses now. Disburse implies expending from a specific source or sum to meet specific obligations, or paying in definite allotments: The treasurer has authority to disburse funds.
Top answer
1 of 2
5

According to the ODO "spend" as a noun is an informal alternative to "spending":

Spend (informal):

  • An amount of money paid out:

    • the average spend at the cafe is £10 a head.

    • the average spend per child is continuing to rise year-on-year.

According to the Collins Dicionary:

  • an amount of money spent, esp regularly, or allocated to be spent

NGRAM shows that spend as a noun has been used since the first decades of the 20th century. Spending appears to be a more common alternative especially from the '70s.

This usage, called nominalization is a matter of debate among linguists as evidenced in the following extract The Dark Side of Verbs-as-Nouns by Hernry Hitchings:

  • I Find that some nominalizations are useful and others are jarring. I can accept that language changes (and has to change) without necessarily cherishing all manifestations of that change. I don’t shudder when I see or hear “This year’s spend is excessive” and “Her book was a good read,” even though I can think of other, perhaps more elegant ways of saying these things.
2 of 2
5

Spend as a noun does not yet seem to enjoy general mainstream use. Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003) has no entry for spend as a noun—and it appears that Merriam-Webster Online has yet to add an entry for it there. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language didn't offer any information on spend as a noun either, as recently as the fourth edition (2000). But the fifth edition (2011) of AHDEL provides this coverage:

spend ... n. 1. an amount of money spent on something: doubled the spend on computers. 2. The spending of money; expenditure: the management of spend.

From the examples given, it seems clear that both spend (1) and spend (2) could be replaced by spending without changing the underlying meaning in either case. But if spend isn't different in meaning from spending in either of the two senses that AHDEL identifies it as having, why does it exist at all? When a word catches on in some precinct of the business or academic world despite not enabling people to make a fine distinction between one thing (called, say, spend) and another (called, say, spending), the logical explanation is that the new term appeals to them for some reason other than its contribution to greater coherence—its value as a marker of up-to-date jargon fluency, perhaps, or its perceived jauntiness.

In any event, spend as a noun in the two senses spelled out by AHDEL has not yet gained the same level of acceptance as spending, as is evident from this entry in the in-house word list at a business consultancy where I do a lot of freelance editing:

spending: consumer spending, marketing spending (not “spend”)

I have no doubt that spend as a noun is well entrenched in some areas of the English-speaking world, but it would be a mistake to suppose that it has achieved parity with spending everywhere. A comparable though even less widely recognized term that has emerged from the land of MBAs is ask as a noun, which carries the meaning "question, request, or inquiry." (AHDEL doesn't have an entry for ask as a noun yet.)

Part of word choice is a simple matter of knowing what words are possible—that is, what words are in use (or at least usable), and therefore understandable, in certain English-speaking populations. But another part of word choice involves having a sense of the tenor, reputation, or prestige that a word may have among readers or listeners. It is surely worth noting that spend as a noun has far less currency than spending in the English-speaking world at large.


Update (April 29, 2022)

In a comment below this answer, site participant DjinTonic points out that an entry for spend as a noun appears in a 1991 edition of Collins English Dictionary—much earlier than I would have expected. This led me to check some late-twentieth-century dictionaries that I have on hand to see whether spend as a noun may have originated in the UK and only later migrated to the United States.

Neither The Concise Oxford Dictionary, sixth edition (1976) nor Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, new edition (1987)—two British dictionaries—has an entry for spend as a noun. Similarly, Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition (2000)—two U.S. dictionaries—do not acknowledge spend as a noun. But a couple of U.S. dictionaries from roughly the same period do mention it.

Here is the relevant entry from The New Oxford American Dictionary (2001):

spend ... n. informal an amount of money paid for a particular purpose or over a particular period of time: the average spend at the cafe is about $10 a head.

And here is the one from [Merriam-]Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1986):

spend n the act or process of spending money — used in the phrase on the spend

The Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Principles, third edition, revised (1955) has a similar entry:

Spend, sb. 1688 {f[rom] SPEND v.} The action of spending money. Only in phr[ase] on or upon the spend.

The 1688 instance that the OED cites is probably from John Bunyan, The Advocateship of Jesus Christ Clearly Explained, and Largely Improved, for the Benefit of All Believers (1688):

Now, set the Case again, that some ill conditioned Man should take Notice, that these poor Men live all upon the spend, (and Saints do so) and should come to the good Man's House, and complain to him of the spending of his Sons, and that while their elder Brother stands by: What do you think the elder Brother would reply, if he was as good-natured as Christ? Why he would say, I have yet with my Father in store for my Brethren: Wherefore then seekest thou to stop his hand?

In fact, published instances of the phrase "upon the spend" (or more precisely, "live upon the spend") go back more than 350 years. From Thomas Doolittle, A Spiritual Antidote against Sinful Contagion (1667):

We too often lose some degrees of our Grace, of love, and Faith, and Hope, and too seldom complain thereof to God. But though we do not so often decay in temporals, we too much complain to man, and murmur and repine against God. Do not many finde some inward frettings in their hearts, that they live upon the spend, and nothing coming in; so many to maintain, and their shops shut up! What trouble is it unto some that the other day did live in good repute, and were esteemed to be rich, that now must be constrained to borrow or to beg; that the other day they hoped should be rich, but now are effectually convinced they are poor; that if they escape the stroke of Death, see themselves falling into the depths of poverty and want!

And from Mrs. Christian Davies, The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, Commonly Call'd Mother Ross (1743):

Our Regiment was quartered in Ghent, where I was delivered of a Child before my Time, which lived about Half a Year. Rather than live upon the Spend, an idle Life, I hired my self to Mr. Dupper, who, since, kept Tavern on Fish Street Hill, and was then head Sutler to be under the Cook.

Although the idiomatic phrase "on the spend" is uncommon after the eighteenth century, it appears at least as late as Thomas Cooke, The Universal Letter Writer: Or, New Art of Polite Correspondence (1841):

Those men whom business does not call out to get money , are generally on the spend ; and he that is driven from home by a wife's ill-humour, is always more extravagant abroad, and even thinks he has a better pretence to be so, while he sacrifices his body and soul, as well as his estate, to his revenge.

I doubt that the old idiom "on the spend" had any significant influence on the emergence of spend as a noun in modern business jargon, but it does provide spend as a noun with an impressively long pedigree in English usage.

🌐
Oxford Learner's Dictionaries
oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com › definition › english › spend_1
spend verb - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com
I felt that this excitement could not keep on long, that it must soon spend itself. It seemed at the time that the frantic rush to buy smartphones had finally spent itself. Word OriginOld English spendan, from Latin expendere ‘pay out’; partly also a shortening of obsolete dispend, from ...
🌐
WordReference
wordreference.com › conj › enverbs.aspx
Conjugation of spend - WordReference.com
WordReference.com | Online Language Dictionaries · English Verb Conjugation | spend · Forums
🌐
Difference Wiki
difference.wiki › spend-vs-spent
Spend vs. Spent: What’s the Difference?
February 1, 2023 - Conversely, "spent" signifies that the action of using money or time has already taken place in the past. ... When someone mentions they "spend" their money on a hobby, it denotes a continuous or regular action.
🌐
Testbook
testbook.com › home › key differences › difference between spend and spent - testbook.com
Difference between Spend and Spent - Testbook.com
Firstly, 'spend' is a verb that signifies the act of using money or time, as in 'You should spend more time practising'. Here, 'spend' is used to indicate the allocation of time for a particular activity.
🌐
Examples
examples.com › english › spend vs spent meanings, difference, examples, when to use
Spend vs Spent - Meanings, Difference, Examples, When to use
April 28, 2024 - “Spend” is the base form of the verb, typically used to talk about using money or time. For example, “I want to spend time with my family.” On the other hand, “spent” is the past tense form, used for actions that happened in the past.
🌐
VEDANTU
vedantu.com › english › spend vs spent: what’s the difference in english grammar?
Spend vs Spent: Simple Grammar Rules, Differences & Examples
The main difference between "spend" and "spent" is their tense and form. "Spend" is used for actions happening now or in the future. "Spent" shows that the action is finished and happened in the past.
🌐
WordWeb
wordwebonline.com › en › SPEND
spend, spends, spent, spending- WordWeb dictionary definition
Get the FREE one-click dictionary software for Windows or the iPhone/iPad and Android apps · Verb: spend (spent) spend · Use up a period of time in a specific way "how are you spending your summer vacation?"; - pass · Pay out "spend money"; - expend, drop ·