Meaning of expensive in English

expensive

adjective

/ɪkˈspen.sɪv/ us

/ɪkˈspen.sɪv/

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costing a lot of money:

Rolls-Royces are very expensive.

be expensive to Big houses are expensive to maintain.

expensive taste She has expensive tastes (= she likes things that cost a lot of money).

Synonyms

costly (EXPENSIVE)
dear  (EXPENSIVE) mainly UK
pricey informal

Opposites

cheap

inexpensive

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

costing a lot of money

expensiveHe thinks he's special with his expensive suits and fancy shoes.
dearUK I find the veg too dear in that supermarket.
costlyThey made several costly mistakes, including spending $60 million on shoddy machinery.
priceyThe restaurants in town are a bit pricey.
exclusiveThey have an apartment in an exclusive part of town.

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More examplesFewer examples

If you send it by airmail, it'll be very expensive.
I treated myself to a meal in an expensive restaurant.
Toddlers don't need expensive toys and games to keep them amused.
A large house like this must be expensive to heat.
A lot of businesses are moving out of London because it's too expensive.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Expensive & luxurious

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Related word

expensively

(Definition of expensive from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

expensive | American Dictionary

expensive

adjective [ not gradable ]

/ɪkˈspen·sɪv/

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costing a lot of money:

Housing in this part of the country is very expensive.

expensively

adverb [ not gradable ] us

/ɪkˈspen·sɪv·li/

She was expensively dressed.

(Definition of expensive from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

expensive | Business English

expensive

adjective

/ɪkˈspensɪv/ us

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costing a lot of money:

Business class travel has become very expensive.

He was looking for insurance to cover the expensive equipment in his home office.

sth is expensive to do Older houses are expensive to maintain.

prohibitively/extremely/hugely expensive

(Definition of expensive from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of expensive

expensive

We also suspected that the timber solutions would be more expensive.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Institutional funds may need expensive computer systems for administration, accounting, and reporting requirements.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Local finance is too expensive under structural adjustment to make agricultural marketing profitable.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Staff time is both valuable and expensive and a more economic model of assessment procedures could be developed.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

They are also less expensive and thus should be preferred for first-step t reatment in older patients.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Aggregating at this level might be empirically difficult or expensive, but makes sense theoretically.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

For instance, a person with very extensive care needs is usually referred to institutional care because home-care would be much more expensive.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Thus, an experienced, talented embroiderer working on the panels for elaborate, expensive dresses could expect to earn, at most, slightly less than £80 per year.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The virtual nature of a computer-based training simulation enables training to be accomplished without risking damage to man or in most cases to expensive equipment.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Moreover, the method is easily available in the laboratory, less expensive and user-friendly for guiding physicians to the proper treatment of typhoid fever.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

All would provide federal financial assistance to the uninsured (based on income) to make the cost of care less expensive.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Furthermore, more expressive languages may be too computationally expensive to use automated reasoning technology.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Finally, we have shown that highly expressed proteins tend to use energetically less expensive amino acids.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Any alterations at proof stage, apart from the correction of printer's misprints, are expensive and must be avoided.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Whatever their merits and promise, these physiologically-based techniques are more complex, and in many instances considerably more expensive to use, than verbal response alone.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of expensive?

Translations of expensive

in Chinese (Traditional)

昂貴的, 用錢多的, 價格高的…

Meaning of expensive in English

Related word

expensive | American Dictionary

expensively

expensive | Business English

Examples of expensive

Translations of expensive

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