expensive
Americanadjective
adjective
Usage
What does expensive mean? Expensive means something is high priced or costs a lot of money.Expensive is most often applied to items with very high prices, such as luxury cars. But it can also be used to describe things whose price or cost is simply high compared to others.Example: I like it, but it’s just too expensive. Do you have any lower-priced models?
Related Words
Expensive, costly, dear, high-priced apply to something that is high in price. Expensive is applied to whatever entails considerable expense; it suggests a price more than the average person would normally be able to pay or a price paid only for something special: an expensive automobile. Costly implies that the price is a large sum, usually because of the fineness, preciousness, etc., of the object: a costly jewel. Dear is commonly applied in England to something that is selling beyond its usual or just price. In the U.S., high-priced is the usual equivalent.
Other Word Forms
- expensively adverb
- expensiveness noun
- quasi-expensive adjective
- quasi-expensively adverb
Etymology
Origin of expensive
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They can be made from a mix of organic and inorganic components and are often less expensive to produce.
From Science Daily
The likeliest option may be an expensive truck route across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea port of Jeddah and then on to New York.
On the high end of the spectrum, the infamously expensive Chevron on the corner of Alameda Street and East Cesar Chavez Avenue in Chinatown is charging more than $8.70 a gallon.
From Los Angeles Times
Starlink devices are expensive as well as illegal, so those who have access tend to be relatively wealthy.
From BBC
A prolonged stretch of expensive gas could renew U.S. interest in EVs, but companies are forging ahead with plans to roll back EV investments.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
