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.
Zolgensma, an in vivo therapy for spinal muscular atrophy, launched at $2.1 million a dose—at the time the most expensive drug the FDA ever approved.
The companies need an unprecedented amount of money to launch as they scramble to build the expensive infrastructure and hire the thought leaders that AI requires.
From Los Angeles Times
Some investors say they don’t expect Abel to make any big investments until a large market decline or recession brings stocks down from historically expensive levels.
Deciding to end a marriage can be difficult, painful and expensive, but the state is giving more couples who choose to amicably call it quits access to a low-cost divorce option.
From Los Angeles Times
China is one of the most expensive countries in which to raise a child, according to a 2024 report by the YuWa Population Research Institute in Beijing.
From BBC
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.
