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I'm reading a book which states the following sentence:
When our flight was delayed, we all had a meal at the airline's expense.
I've tried to find in the following dictionary the definition of the word expense in this context but I'm not sure which one of them is the right.
To which definition in the following dictionary is matched? Dictionary.com: expense
I'm not entirely happy with the entries given in the link.
- at someone's expense
Paid for by someone.
‘the document was printed at the taxpayer's expense’
1.1 With someone as the victim, especially of a joke.
‘my friends all had a good laugh at my expense’
So in OP's example, the airline paid for "our" meals. In other words, the meals were free to compensate "us" for the delay.
Towards a more general definition...
When something is "at someone's|something's expense" :
We had a meal at the airline's expense.
The joke was at his expense.
You planted those shade trees at my garden's expense.
The cuckoo lays its eggs in the nest of another species of bird, at the expense of the other bird's chicks.
the cost is borne by that person or entity, and the "cost" can be literal (an expenditure of money, a loss of income) or figurative, such as loss of "face", a loss of standing in a group or community, a (permanent or momentary) loss of respect, or, as in the case of the garden, a loss of growth, a result of being deprived of sunlight, or a loss of life itself, as in the case of the birds in the nest.
