to "expense"

James Harbeck jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA
Sat Jan 5 01:00:34 UTC 2008


Thanks, Mark. The examples you give could all also be replaced with
"put on expense account as," as in "put it on expense account as an
office expense" (as opposed to as a business development expense,
say), although I must admit "expense it as a company expense" seems a
touch redundant. Perhaps in these usages there's a sort of image of
its being entered into an expense account sheet -- i.e., that the act
of entering something on an expense account sheet is "expensing," and
one can speak of it generally or one can specify it -- some users
perhaps automatically thinking of it as something that must be
entered under a category, others not necessarily.

And since it's not "dictionary English," neither side can claim the
other is using it wrong!

James Harbeck.

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