Gold in different ways spent (4)
I believe the answer is:
worn
'spent' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'gold in different ways' is the wordplay.
'gold' becomes 'or' ('or' is the heraldic name for gold).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'different ways' becomes 'wn' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'or' inserted within 'wn' is 'WORN'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for worn that I've seen before include "Frayed" , "Shabby" , "Looking tired and exhausted" , "Sported on the body" , "Damaged by long use" .)