expensive

Definition

Having a high price or cost.

Etymology

From Latin *expēnsīvus, from expendō (“to weigh out (money), to pay out”) (whence English expend). By surface analysis, expense + -ive. In the sense of "high-priced" has largely displaced dear.

Example Sentences

• "If successful, Edison and Ford—in 1914—would move society away from the ever more expensive and then universally known killing hazards of gasoline cars: air and water pollution, noise and noxiousness, constant coughing and the undeniable rise in cancers caused by smoke exhaust particulates."
• "In Starbucks’s case, the firm has in effect turned the process of making an expensive cup of coffee into intellectual property."
• "an unnecessarily expensive choice of algorithm"

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