expensum

Expensum is a Latin noun used in ancient and late antique financial records to denote an expense or outlay. The form is the neuter singular of the supine expensum, linked to the verb expendo, meaning to spend or outlay. In classical Latin, expensa is more commonly used to indicate expenses in general, while expensum appears in occasional ledger entries and documents as a specific item of expenditure. The term is discussed in Latin dictionaries and concordances as part of the vocabulary surrounding financial administration.

Historical usage of expensum is primarily attested in inscriptions, bureaucratic registers, and legal texts where a precise amount spent on goods, services, or obligations needed to be recorded. Its exact frequency varies by manuscript tradition and region, but it is generally considered a less common form compared with expensa or expensae, the latter being more widely used for plural or collective expenditures.

In modern scholarship, expensum is of interest mainly for philological and historiographical purposes. It helps illuminate how Roman and late antique administrators categorized and documented disbursements. While the term itself is not a standard part of contemporary accounting vocabulary, it provides insight into the linguistic development of expenditure terminology from classical Latin into later bureaucratic Latin.

Etymology: derived from the verb expendo, with the supine expensum; related forms include expensa (expense) and expensus (spent). See also expensa, expensus, expendo.