Word.ws English Dictionary

dispend

dispend verb: to spend or expend.

Verb

dispend (third-person singular simple present dispends, present participle dispending, simple past and past participle dispended or dispent)

  1. (obsolete) To spend or expend.
    • Those Roman knights were so called, if they could dispend per annum so much.1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II...
  2. (obsolete) To waste or squander.
  3. (obsolete) To distribute or dispense.

Forms of dispend

third-person singular presentdispends
present participledispending
past participledispended
pastdispended
past participledispent
pastdispent

Origin of dispend

From Old French despendre ( > French dépendre), from Latin dispendere.

Questions about dispend

What does dispend mean?
Dispend means to spend or expend.
What part of speech is dispend?
Dispend is a verb.
What is the past tense of dispend?
The past tense of dispend is dispended.

Words near dispend in the dictionary

  1. dispels
  2. dispence
  3. dispenced
  4. dispences
  5. dispencing
  6. dispend
  7. dispended
  8. dispender
  9. dispenders
  10. dispending
  11. dispendious

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dispend (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “dispend.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dispend. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.