Time Spent - what is the purpose?

Question

The Time Spent field in the Jira issue view is not related to the time spent on a ticket logged in the work log, so what is its purpose?  I can't find anything about it in the documentation - lots of other things come up, but not a description of what the Time Spent field is meant to be.

unknown · Answer

No auto-complete results appear.

Jack Brickey · Answer

Do me a favor go to “advanced search for issues” view and in the JQL search box start typing “time” and observe the auto-complete results. Do you see “Timespent”? Any other variants?

unknown · Answer

I'm told by the admin that it is a built-in field.

That's the field.  When I log work that field doesn't change.

As for explain my findings, I'm not sure I can make it any simpler than I log work and the time is not added to the time spent.  Perhaps you can explain which part of that is confusing?