Expense: The Cost You Have Actually Paid Out
An expense is money spent, especially for a purpose that can be recorded. The phrase at the expense of moves the idea beyond money.
An expense is money that goes out: rent, fuel, a train ticket claimed back from work. English then lends the word to anything given up for something else — a victory won *at the expense of* the team's health costs no money at all.
- Money spent. *Travel expenses.*
- A cost of doing something. *At great expense.*
- At the expense of — with loss or damage to. *Speed at the expense of accuracy.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | expense | A large expense. |
| Plural | expenses | Claim your expenses. |
| Adjective | expensive | An expensive habit. |
| Verb | expense | Expense the meal. |
| Related | expenditure | Public expenditure. |
How it is used in a sentence
- The company covers travel expenses.Plural for a set of claimable costs.
- They rebuilt it at enormous expense.At expense, without an article, for scale.
- He made the joke at his brother's expense.Meaning the brother was the target.
Expense, cost, price and expenditure
- Price — what something is sold for
- Cost — what it takes to get or make it
- Expense — money actually paid out, often recorded
- Expenditure — total spending, a formal or official word
- Overheads — the running costs that continue whatever you sell
From Anglo-French *expense*, from Latin *expensa*, money paid out, from *expendere*, to weigh out — payment was once literally weighed. *Spend*, *expend* and *pension* all come from the same weighing.
Expense or cost?
Cost is the general word. Expense usually means money actually paid, and in accounting it means a cost charged against a period's income.
What does *at the expense of* mean?
That one thing was gained by sacrificing another. It usually implies the trade was a bad one.