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.
As if Dad breaks expensive electronics so frequently his meltdown isn’t worth discussing.
From Literature
In New Jersey, another expensive state for homeowners, the drop in the number of homes at the $500,000 mark was even more dramatic.
From MarketWatch
The report found that consumers are adapting to affordability issues by trading down to less expensive goods and services — for example, shopping at value-oriented grocers instead of premium grocery stores.
From MarketWatch
“Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people,” he said, while OpenAI feels “strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions.”
From Los Angeles Times
“That could be a very time-consuming, cumbersome and expensive process,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times
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.
