expensive
- 01 A1 Beginner
costing a lot of money.
having a high price or requiring a large financial expenditure.
Simple“I wanted to buy the new phone, but it was too expensive for me.”
In context“The city's real estate market has become so expensive that many young professionals are forced to commute from the outer suburbs.”
UsageCommonly used with 'too' or 'very' to indicate a price that is difficult to afford.
PitfallThe price of the car is very expensive. The car is very expensive.In English, objects are 'expensive', but prices are 'high'. You cannot say a price is expensive.
Antonyms - 02 C1 Advanced
using a lot of a computer's power, memory, or time.
requiring significant computational resources, such as processing power, memory, or execution time.
Simple“Running this complex search is very expensive for the server.”
In context“The developer refactored the code because the original sorting algorithm was too computationally expensive for mobile devices.”
UsageOften used to describe specific functions, algorithms, or database queries.
Teacher's tipIn a technical context, 'expensive' refers to efficiency rather than money.
Antonyms
Usage prohibitively expensive
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.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.