Spense

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small room or cupboard in an old house where food and provisions were kept
2. An archaic storeroom, usually near the kitchen, used for keeping food and household supplies
3. A larder or pantry of former times where bread, preserves and other provisions were stored

Etymology: The word "spense" is an older form of "spence," and its ancestry runs back to a Latin verb meaning "to weigh out." Medieval Latin turned the feminine past participle of that verb into a noun, "dispensa," meaning something dispensed or portioned out, and that noun was the starting point. Middle French borrowed it as "despense," meaning expense or provision, and English later took the word from French as "spence" in Middle English. The idea behind the word is the careful measuring out of supplies. A household storeroom was the place where provisions were kept and doled out, so the name came to describe the room itself rather than the act of distributing food. The same root gave English "dispense," which still carries the sense of doling something out in measured portions.