# expressive

/ɪksˈpɹɛsɪv/ (US) · /ɛkspɹˈɛsɪv/ (UK)

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/expressive
Updated: 2026-08-08

## Senses

### 1. showing feelings clearly

adjective · CEFR B2

showing your thoughts or feelings clearly, especially through your face or voice.

For teachers: effectively conveying thought, emotion, or meaning through non-verbal or verbal cues.

- The dancer had a very expressive face that told the whole story.
- Her performance was remarkably expressive, conveying a depth of grief that resonated with the audience far more than the dialogue alone.

### 2. linguistic emotion

adjective · CEFR C1 · Technical

showing the speaker's feelings or attitude in addition to the basic meaning of the words.

For teachers: conveying the speaker's emotions or attitudes beyond the literal or denotative meaning of an utterance.

- Using words like 'wonderful' makes your language more expressive.
- The linguist argued that the expressive function of the particle was to signal the speaker's skepticism rather than to modify the noun itself.

### 3. range of ideas

adjective · CEFR C1 · Technical

able to represent many different ideas or complex concepts easily.

For teachers: capable of representing a wide range of ideas, concepts, or operations within a specific system or language.

- This new programming language is very expressive and lets you write less code.
- The developers chose a more expressive syntax to allow for complex data manipulations that would be cumbersome in a more rigid language.

### 4. a word showing attitude

noun · CEFR C2 · Technical

a word or phrase that shows how the speaker feels about what they are saying.

For teachers: a lexical item or phrase that functions to express the speaker's attitude toward the referent.

- In the sentence 'That poor dog', the word 'poor' is an expressive.
- The study categorised various expressives used in political discourse to determine how subtle shifts in tone influenced voter perception.

## Examples

- She has a very expressive face that shows exactly how she feels.
- The dancer used expressive movements to tell a story of loss and hope without saying a single word.
- Critics praised the novelist's expressive prose, noting how her vivid metaphors captured the internal psychological states of her characters with remarkable precision.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.